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My Twenty-Three Years 
Experience as a 
Detective 


19 2 3 



' 

BY 

G. W. cTVlcNUTT 

Ex-Chief of Detectives of Des Moines , Iowa 
Also Ex-Chief of the Wallace and 
Hagenback Circus 








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Copyrighted 1923 


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MARSHALL MILLER. JAMES CAVENDER, 

Supt. Public Safety. Secretary. 

CITY OF DES MOINES 
Department of Police 
M. J. Conoghue, Chief 

August 28th, 1920. 

To Whom It May Concern: 

This is to state that Mr. George W. McNutt is a 
very well known citizen of Des Moines, Iowa, and 
has thousands of friends in this city. 

Mr. McNutt was for many years a prominent 
member of our police force, at one time acting as 
Chief of Detectives for several years and has held 
other offices of trust in Des Moines, all of which he 
fulfilled with great credit. 

Mr. McNutt had to retire from active work some 
years ago owing to having received a light stroke. 
We understand he is now rapidly recovering from the 
same and proposes to enter in business in Kansas 
City. 

Any favors or courtesies extended to Mr. McNutt 
in Kansas City or elsewhere will be greatly appre¬ 
ciated by the Police Department of the City of Des 
Moines. 

(Signed) M. J. DONOGHUE, 
Chief of Police. 





IOWA NATIONAL FIRE INSURANCE CO. 

Des Moines 

Cary M. Spencer, Secretary 

July 13th, 1918. 

To Whom It May Concern : 

I am glad to give this testimony of the favorable 
acquaintance that I have had with Mr. George W. 
McNutt, of Des Moines, whom I have known for 
many years, and know that he has always enjoyed 
an excellent reputation for uprightness and fair deal¬ 
ing. 

I also know that he has been seriously afflicted 
with Locomotor Ataxia, and until recently has been 
making his way about with the aid of tv/o crutches. 
Recently he has been able to dispense with most of 
the artificial assistance and shows some improvement. 

I am sure that anybody will be justified in plac¬ 
ing explicit confidence in Mr. McNutt’s word and 
his agreements. 

Yours respectfully, 

(Signed) C. M. SPENCER, Secy. 

I fully concur in the above. 

(Signed) John L. BLAKLY, Pres. 


JOHN McVICAR 
Des Moines 


May 22, 1918. 

To Whom It May Concern : 

It affords me pleasure to say that the bearer George 
W. McNutt is well and favorably known in Des 
Moines. He has held responsible positions in the 
Department of Public Safety here, and is reliable and 
trustworthy. He has for several years been badly 
cripped with locomotor ataxia, and until recently 
has walked with crutches or cane. 

Yours truly, 

(Signed) JOHN MACVlCAR. 


CHAS. W. ROGG COMPANY, Inc. 
Druggists 


Des Moines, Iowa, July 1, 1918. 

To Whom It May Concern : 

We take great pleasure in recommending the bearer, 
Mr. Geo. McNutt, having known him for years. 
He has held responsible positions here in the Depart¬ 
ment of Safety and was found satisfactory and trust¬ 
worthy; has been unable to work owing to sickness 
but seems to have improved in health recently. 

Yours truly, 

C. W. Rogg Co., Inc., 

(Signed) E. L. JANES. 


MONRAD J. OLSEN PHARMACY 
"The Rexall Store’’ 


Des Moines, Iowa, July 1, 1918. 

To Whom It May Concern : 

We have personally known Mr. George McNutt 
for a number of years, both before and since his fail¬ 
ing health, and know that he has always borne an 
excellent reputation, and was the most efficient Chief 
of Detectives our City ever had. 

This duty he was forced to give up, on account 
of his illness. 

In our business relations with him, we have always 
found him to be True and Square. 

Monrad J. Olsen's Pharmacy, 
(Signed F. E. Jones, Mgr. 

FEJ:B. 


ALFRED HAMMER 0 COMPANY 
Druggists 
310 Walnut Street 


Des Moines, Iowa, July 1, 1918. 

To Whom It May Concern : 

Mr. George McNutt has been a resident of Des 
Moines for many years and has been employed by 
the city as Chief of Detectives where he was re¬ 
spected as an efficient officer and citizen. He has 
been incapacitated for duty recently, owing to illness 
and we have always found him a true blue friend 
and citizen. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Alfred Hammer & Co., 

(Signed EDWARD CHILDS. 


DES MOINES ICE © COLD STORAGE CO. 


Des Moines, Iowa, July 1, 1918. 

To Whom It May Concern : 

The bearer, Geo. McNutt, has been a resident of 
this city for many years and was for a major portion 
of the time connected with the Police Department, 
part of the time under Mayor McVicar who speaks 
very highly of him both as an officer and a citizen. 

He has for some time past been in poor health, but 
is now feeling much better. 

Yours truly, 

(Signed) J. G. Black. 


THE MECHANICS SAVINGS BANK 

Des Moines 


Office of the President 


July 13, 1918. 


To Whom It May Concern : 

I have known the bearer for many years both as 
a friend and as one of the most capable detectives we 
have ever had on our force. 

His health having failed him he has been obliged 
to leave the chosen life work for other pursuits. I 
regard him very highly and commend him to your 
favorable consideration. 

Yours very truly. 

(Signed) G. E. MACKINNON. Pres. 


PEOPLE'S SAVINGS BANK 
Des Moines, Iowa 


July 2, 1918. 


To Whom It May Concern : 

We are pleased to recommend to you Mr. George 
McNutt of this city whom we have known for a 
number of years. He has been well and favorably 
known during his residence here, our business rela¬ 
tions with him have always been entirely pleasant 
and satisfactory, we have always found him honor¬ 
able and trustworthy and believe he is worthy of 
your confidence. 

Any courtesy shown him will be greatly appre¬ 
ciated. 

Yours truly, 

(Signed) C. H. MARTIN, Pres. 





























My Twenty-Three Years Experience 

as a Detective 

CHAPTER I 
Synopsis 

The contents of this book will be as follows: 

My first experience as a policeman, and after four 
years of service as a policeman, I was appointed to 
Chief of Detectives. How I came to be appointed. 
The rottenness of politics, both in the department 
and outside the department. The condition I ac¬ 
cepted the office, the different kinds of crime and 
how they are detected. The advice to girls and 
mothers. How so many girls go to the bad. My 
two years experience as Chief of Detectives, or Of¬ 
ficial Manager of the Wallace Circus. My experi¬ 
ence in politics. Advice to young girls and boys. 

There will be nothing in this article that young 
boys and girls cannot read, in fact, it is an edu¬ 
cation for the young people. It exposes crimes of 
all kinds and shows the fatal ending of all crim¬ 
inals, for there never was a criminal that did not 
finally receive what was coming to him. It either 
ends in death or the penitentiary. The first part 
of this article will not be as interesting as the last 
part, for as I became better educated in crime and 
experience, the more proficient I became in the 


18 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


business, and the more large and tough cases I had 
to handle. About this time, I became mixed in 
politics, and at that time the police department 
was in politics. I could readily see what a curse 
it was to have political bosses coming to our police 
officers and threatening them by saying that they 
would get their job, as they stood in with the 
Mayor and council, if they pushed the case they 
had against so and so. I went one evening at roll 
call before the department and asked the boys to 
assist me in having a civil service bill passed by the 
legislature. The police appointed Sergant Thomas 
Denham, and myself and Denham put in two months 
. working with the legislature and the committee on 
cities and towns. Our bill finally came up and we 
found that we only had two majority if they all 
voted as they had agreed to. So the bill came up 
the next morning for passage and we won out by 
a two majority. This placed both the police and 
fire departments under civil service. They had to 
take their civil service examinations before the civil 
service commission, and then if they passed the ex¬ 
amination, and after twenty-two years of service, 
they were allowed to retire from active service on 
half the salary they were drawing at that time. 
The improvement in the department was something 



Experience as a Detective 


19 


wonderful, for the boys could then say to the poli¬ 
ticians “You get out of here with your threats and 
promises, or I will arrest you, and put a charge 
against you of interferring with an officer in his 
official business." And after the boys knew that 
their jobs were only dependent on their good ser¬ 
vice to the department and to the city, we soon 
cleaned the city up, and had as clean a city as there 
was anywhere in the country for the size of it and 
as good a police department. I also explained the 
Bertillion system of measurements, how we meas¬ 
ure criminals, and take their Bertillion measure¬ 
ments. Now, my dear readers, I will proceed to give 
you my history from the time I was born. 



20 


My Twenty-three Years' 


CHAPTER II 
Historical 

I was born in Nicolet County, Minnesota, in 1859, 
and at one A. M. on the 13 th day of March, in a 
little log hut that father built himself, it was lo¬ 
cated in the heavy timber along the Minnesota 
River. Father having taken up a claim from the 
Government which contained twenty-two hundred 
sugar trees, of which we used to make a great deal 
of maple syrup and maple sugar. In 1861 when 
the war of the rebellion broke out, the Indians of 
the country, especially the Sioux and Black Hawks, 
the Chief of the Sioux, old Sitting Bull, used to have 
a camping ground right in our timber, and there 
has been as high as five thousand Indians camped 
there at once. My mother at one time while they 
were camped there. Sitting Bull's son was taken very 
sick. My mother, who was a very good cook used 
to fix up different kind of dishes of food and take 
out to him. And by so doing she made a great 
friend of Sitting Bull. After the draft had passed, 
and they were drafting all the able-bodied men of 
Minnesota in the war, the Indians made up their 
minds they would massacre those who were left 
and take back their lands that had been taken from 



Experience as a Detective 


21 


them by the Government. At the same time Sitting 
Bull sent one of his friends to my mother, and no¬ 
tified her that they were going to massacre all the 
whites in the country and for us to get our things 
together and get out of the country as fast as pos¬ 
sible. We immediately hitched up two ox teams 
we had two wagons, loaded them with all the 
goods we could and started tcx Iowa. We crossed 
what was then known as the big Prairie and were 
about half way across the same, and we could see 
the fires burning, for the Indians had massacred the 
people and set fire to the buildings. We finally 
got through Minnesota and over into Iowa, and 
we came on through Des Moines, Iowa. I was 
then two years and three months old at the time 
of our arrival in Des Moines. I started to school 
in the old brick building known at that time as 
the first ward school. About that time, or a little 
later, Wm. E. Mason, the ex-Senator from Illinois 
took charge of the school, and kept charge of it 
for five years. And I want to say right now that 
I learned more from the honorable Wm. E. Mason 
in that period of time than I learned all the rest of 
the time of my school life. Mason afterward re¬ 
signed, went with Palmer and Withrow into their 
law office, and studied law with them until Withrow 



22 


My Twenty-three Years' 


went to Chicago and Mason went with him, and 
became one of the brightest attorneys in Chicago. 
He was first elected to the House from Illinois, and 
then to the Senate. This position he was holding 
at the time of his death. At the age of 10 I was 
appointed the janitor of the schoolhouse by St. John 
who was treasurer. I held that position until a 
woman by the name of Dugan was appointed as 
teacher. She was one of these red-headed school 
marms who always had their pets, and to whom 
the other scholars had to knuckle or have a row. 
I would always prefer the row rather than to 
knuckle to anybody. Those days the seats of the 
school house were the desk for those behind and 
the seat for the one in front. So that a scholar 
when writing, if the one who sat in front wanted 
to be mean, he could shake the desk and make the 
one behind ruin their copy-book. There were two 
pets of Miss Dugan, who were sitting in the seat 
in front of me, and had been shaking the seat a 
great deal during the twenty minutes we had for 
writing. I went to the teacher and told her and 
she said that she guessed the girls who were in front 
would not hurt me if I did not bother them. The 
next day they tried the same thing over, I got very 
mad, packed up my books and left school. I went 



Experience as a Detective 


23 


over to see Mr. St. John about the matter the next 
day, he wanted me to go back to school, but I 
said “No, Mr. St. John, not as long as that red¬ 
headed cat is teaching. But I would like to hold 
my position as janitor for awhile anyway. 1 ' He 
said that was alright that I could hold the posi¬ 
tion as long as I wanted to, as I had done very 
good work and given satisfaction to the Board of 
Education. I was almost ready to graduate into 
High School when this trouble came up, and I quit 
school and went into the express business. I stayed 
in that about fifteen years, after first getting started, 
I took my brother and father in with me, and we 
worked the business up until we had altogether 
fifteen wagons between the express \and transfer 
business together. I then sold my interest to my 
brother and father, and went into the police de¬ 
partment under Mayor Campbell. I served four 
years as patrolman, ten years as Chief, and seven 
years as a member of the detective department. I 
then had some trouble with the democratic mayor 
who had just been elected and went off the depart¬ 
ment for two years, coming back again under Mayor 
James Brenton. I then stayed on the department 
until John Hammery was elected a member of the 
public safety department. The first morning after 





24 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


the election of Hammery, he came into my office, 
and said he had made up his mind to put another 
man in my place as Chief of Detectives, said he 
knew I had a right to fight the case before the po¬ 
lice Commissioners, but if I did he would make it 
so hot for me around the headquarters that I would 
wish I was never born. And knowing what a dirty 
cur he was, I concluded after having talked the mat¬ 
ter over with my wife that I would drop into the 
department and let the Chiefship go. But that did 
not stop him, he kept on for several weeks trying to 
make me so angry that I would resign, and I finally 
made up my mind that it was going to be a case of 
kill Hammery or resign from the department. And 
not wanting my name up as a murderer of his calibre, 
I went into the office one morning and sat down 
and tendered my resignation in writing. I took it 
into Hammery and said “And now, you dirty dog, 
I suppose you are satisfied, here is my resignation.” 
I then says to him “Now Hammery it is six weeks 
more to election, and I’ll tell you what I am going 
to do, I am going to put in that six weeks both day 
and night, trying to beat you for a second term, so 
you can make up your mind that I am after you from 
now on.” About four weeks after John discovered 
that I was putting in some pretty hard blows which 




Experience as a Detective 


25 


were liable to defeat him. So he said “Now Mac, 
if you will let upon me, I will come out in an article 
in the paper, stating this was a put-up job on you 
for the purpose of getting you to resign. I will 
explain the whole case to the public and clear you 
of all charges.” I says to him “You dirty cur, you 
come out in the paper beforehand and square me with 
the public and then come to me and talk, but not 
until then.” But he did not do it, so I kept on 
working day and night until election day, and we 
beat him about eighteen hundred votes. I then went 
to work for the P. F. Collier Publishing Company of 
New York and worked for them for seven years 
selling their books and magazines. I then after doing 
some careful figuring made up my mind to go over 
to the Capitol Extension Co., of the Capitol grounds 
enlarging the grounds. They had bought about 
thirteen blocks to extend the Capitol grounds, in 
a thickly settled residence part of the city. When 
I got over they had sold everything except five brick 
apartment houses. I asked the superintendent what 
he would take for the five. He figured up and said 
“Twenty-five hundred dollars.” I says “No, I’ll 
give you eighteen hundred dollars as they are, and 
will tear them down and remove them at once.” He 
said “They are yours.” So I then asked him if he 



26 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


would turn over the men to me that had done all 
the wrecking. He said he would and we went up 
where the men were working and called them over 
to us, and said, ’‘Men, you are all working for Mr. 
McNutt from this time on.” The men all said 
alright as long as they got the same salary as the 
state was paying them. I knew they were exper¬ 
ienced men at the business, so we went to work 
the next morning wrecking the brick flats. I gave 
them instructions to take the woodwork all off and 
tie it up in packages, mark them what room they 
belonged in and place the doors and windows with 
the parcels so that when I got them over where I in¬ 
tended to build all I had to do was to sort the wood¬ 
work out for each room, as I had built the brick 
work the same size rooms, halls and everything that 
they were in the old building that was torn down. 
The woodwork was in good condition and so was 
the brick. So that all they had to do was to open 
the packages marked for each room and nail the 
woodwork in its place, being all fitted and every¬ 
thing ready to go in the room. We left the locks 
and doorknobs right on the doors, and all they 
had to do was to put the windows in the frames 
and the room was completed. I got a hundred and 
seventy-five thousand brick out of the five flats, 



Experience as a Detective 


27 


and only lost about ten thousand out of the whole 
thing. I bought about fifty thousand, or I should 
say a hundred and fifty thousand from the Barber 
Asphalt and Brick Co. I used all the new brick 
for the front and the old brick which was nearly 
all paving brick I used for the side walls, partitions, 
etc., so I got the flats built for about half of 
what it would cost me by buying new brick and 
lumber and putting them all up new. And you 
could not tell them from new after they were fin¬ 
ished. They cost me only about thirty-five thou¬ 
sand dollars. In the meantime I had gone to the 
Central Trust Co., of Des Moines to get a loan of 
fourteen thousand, they persuaded me to take a tem¬ 
porary loan of six thousand and when I had the 
buildings inclosed they would make the loan four¬ 
teen thousand permanent for ten years at six per 
cent. I had enclosed the buildings about three days 
before the temporary loan was due. Scott Rawson 
who was president of the Central Trust Co. had 
made up his mind he was going to get the flats for 
six thousand dollars. So he refused to make the 
permanent loan and three days after started fore¬ 
closure on the temporary loan. It was just at the 
time during the war when you could hardly bor¬ 
row money at any price. I went to the National 




28 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


Fire Insurance Co., of Iowa, and asked them for a 
loan of twenty-four thousand, and they said they 
would go up and look at the property that day, 
which they did, and they said to me the next morn¬ 
ing they did not hardly think that would be enough 
to pay off the Central Trust Co. claim and finish 
them up. So they said we have made up our minds 
to let you have twenty-eight thousand and we know 
that will be enough to finish them up. In the 
meantime Rawson had gone into court under fore¬ 
closure, thrown it in the hands of the receiver, and 
had himself appointed receiver. He had started to 
finish the flats, he went and hired the same man 
whom I had fired for stealing plumbing goods 
from the building. The two of them had run up 
a bill of over five thousand dollars, and had not 
done over one thousand dollars worth of work. 
The court, as usual, allowed all the bills they put 
in. They had allowed Rawson’s attorney seven 
hundred dollars as attorney’s fee, for which he had 
not done over one hundred dollars worth of work 
on the whole transaction. Other bills that Rawson 
had made while acting as receiver which totaled 
fourteen thousand dollars included the temporary 
mortgage. I got Rawson and went down to the 
fire insurance office, and ordered them to pay him 



Experience as a Detective 


29 


fourteen thousand dollars, which they did, and I 
went on and finished up the flats, and paid all the 
bills I could out of the other fourteen thousand. 
At that time I was about all in on money so a party 
made me an offer of thirty-five thousand dollars, 
for the apartments, which contained fifteen apart¬ 
ments, with from four to five rooms in each apart¬ 
ment. I had to take a farm in Wisconsin of three 
hundred and twenty acres and one in Texas of one 
hundred and sixty acres and one in South Dakota 
of eighty acres. I had to let them go for what I 
could get, which was a very small amount, and all 
were incumbered. I went to Wisconsin and the 
party there had threatened foreclosure and offered 
me five hundred dollars or they would foreclose 
their mortgage, and being out of money at that time 
I had to let it go. I had to sell the Texas farm for 
eight hundred, and the South Dakota farm, I onlv 
got five fifty for. About a year after that the party 
who had bought the flats sold them for ninety thou¬ 
sand dollars. I owned my residence property which 
was an eight room, all modern, and worth seven 
thousand dollars. I also owned a cottage next door, 
five room, value four thousand. I owned the two 
lots just south of the flats which I had been offered 
two thousand for. I also owned three houses and 



30 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


lots in Kansas City, one on Thirty-ninth, west of 
Woodland Ave., value forty-five hundred. I owned 
one on Howard Street, just off Prospect Avenue and 
eight rooms all modern valued at six thousand. I 
owned a seven room bungalow, with two sleeping 
porches, on Thirty-third and the Paseo, which 
was valued at eight thousand. Of course there were 
encumbrances on most all this property but I thought 
at the time that I could pull through and still think 
so if it had not been for Scott Rawson and the Cen¬ 
tral Trust Co. I sold my home property for fif¬ 
ty-five hundred, took that and bought the Newport 
Pool and Billiard Hall at 412 W. Locust. I took 
a few hundred dollars and painted and papered, re¬ 
covered the tables, and had one of the best pool and 
billiard halls in the city for its size. I bought that 
from one Ralph Weimer who guaranteed me that all 
bills were paid and that he did not owe anything 
on the place. I later discovered that there was over 
fourteen hundred dollars in bills against the place. 
I went to him and demanded that he pay those 
bills at once or I would prosecute him. In the mean¬ 
time I was doing my business under my oldest 
daughter’s name. My attorney who had been doing 
business for me for some time was also Weimer's 
attorney, and he and Weimer got their heads to- 



Experience as a Detective 


31 


gethcr and concocted a scheme whereby they could 
get a half interest in the pool hall. They telephoned 
my daughter one day to come immediately over to 
the lawyer’s office and not to say anything to me 
about coming. She immediately dressed herself and 
went over to the lawyer's office and Weimer and 
his lawyer were there waiting. Weimer told her 
he had the drop on me and could send me to the 
penitentiary and would do so if she did not give 
him a half interest in the billiard hall, and it scared 
her almost to death to think that I might have t^ 
go to the penitentiary, so she told him that she would 
sign it over. This happened just before dinner, and 
after dinner, I had just started out to pay three 
hundred and seventy-five dollars worth of bills that 
I owed, when I came back Weimer was in there 
and had possession, and said that my daughter had 
signed a half interest over to him and was to pay him 
a salary of twenty-five dollars a week for running 
the place. I was about the sickest man you ever 
saw, I always kept a gun in the cashdrawer, I start¬ 
ed in and went behind the bar to get my gun, and 
Weimer had stole that out. If I had gotten it I 
would surely have killed him on the spot. Knowing 
that if I left the place it might be to my disadvan¬ 
tage when we came to court, so I called up my at- 



32 


My Twenty-three Years' 


torney on the telephone and asked him what I had 
better do. Well, he said it was too late now to get 
hold of the court and that I might just as well go on 
home and wait until morning. So I went home and 
sat down to think of the best way out, and finally 
made up my mind that there was only one thing 
to do, that was to throw the business in the hands 
of the receivers and have the court appoint a friend 
of mine as the receiver. My attorney and I went 
up to the Sheriff's office to get a warrant to serve 
for Weimer's arrest. The Sheriff refused to serve 
the warrant that night but said that he would the 
next morning. The next morning we insisted on 
him serving it at once and finally did serve it, ar¬ 
rested Weimer and took him to the courthouse and 
while Weimer was there the new receiver took pos¬ 
session. Weimer was a gambler and was running a 
gambling house over the pool hall at the time I 
bought it. My lease, by the way, covered the whole 
building including the basement. Weimer offered 
me a hundred dollars a month for the upstairs room 
he was then occupying. I had furnished a room 
for myself up over the billiard hall and was out of 
town one day, and when I came back the furniture 
I had bought from Davidson Bros, on the install¬ 
ment plan had all been removed from the room, I 



Experience as a Detective 


33 


immediately went down to Davidson Bros, and de¬ 
manded to know what they had done with the 
furniture and they said Weimer had come down 
there and ordered them to come and get it and take 
it out of his room which they did and took it to 
their warehouse. I then served notice on them to 
either return the furniture or pay me back what I 
had paid on it or I would immediately have them 
arrested. They had broke the lock on the door to 
get in, and had laid themselves liable for so doing. 
So Davidson agreed to give me credit for the amount 
I had paid on the furniture and also twenty-five 
dollars for my trouble. They left the furniture that 
I had bought placed in the room and my trunk, 
etc., so I had to go to a hotel and get me a room. I 
stayed there and worried and fussed until my legs 
gave out and I then packed my grip and came on to 
K. C. I was laid up for some time with my legs 
and after I got some better I went to work for the 
Westlands Photograph Co. I worked for them up 
to December of last year. I then was laid up until 
April of this year, when I went to work for the 
B-R Electric Co. for whom I am still working. 

I was married June 27th, 1880, to Miss Susie 
Shunk at 605 Des Moines Street and was at that 
time in the Fruit and Confectionery business on 



34 


My Twenty-three Years" 


East 5th and Locust St. I had a lease on the build¬ 
ing for 2 years and when the lease ran out the 
owner refused to release me the room for the reason 
that they had made plans to build a five story 
brick building and I had to move in a place at that 
time that proved to be no good on. East 4th and 
Walnut where the Northwestern Hotel now stands. 
The hotel is run by Otto Starsinger and is a very 
good place to stop. I then went back into the ex¬ 
press and transfer business. Previous to our mar¬ 
riage I had learned the printer’s trade. I was with 
Thomas Orwig of the Des Moines Daily Bulletin. 
Wills & Co., job printers, and the Des Moines Daily 
Bulletin but the business did not agree with my 
health and I went to work outside in the open air. 
I stayed in the express and transfer business until I 
went on to the Police Department. My wife and 
I raised a family of five children, Eva, Ernest, 
Blanche and the youngest were twins, Hattie and 
Hazel. The twins looked so much alike nobody 
could tell them apart. I gave all my children a 
good education, three of them on to the stage. The 
boy started out as advance man for the Wilbur Kier- 
win Opera Company about the time Dr. Rucker 
who had located his show at the Capital City Opera 
House. Joe Connelly was manager of the opera 




Experience as a Detective 


35 


house. The Doctor always gave one amateur night 
a week and sent for me to come out and I went 
and he says, “McNutt, I understand you have a 
couple of twins that have the reputation of being 
real clever and I want you to let them go on tonight 
at the amateur contest, we are giving tonight a thirty 
seven piece silver set and from what I have heard 
of them, I believe they can win it.” The girls had 
been on at the amateur's contest a short time before 
and had made such a big hit they were the talk of 
the town. The girls went on and the rules of the 
contest were that the winners were to be left to a 
vote of the house and when the vote was announced, 
it was unanimous in favor of the twins. A short 
time after that the Doctor went with his show to 
Minneapolis and he wired me to send the girls and 
he would start them in at $50.00 a week. They 
were then only 14 years old. 

So I had an aunt living there and the girls went 
direct to my aunt, in fact, I went with them my¬ 
self to Minneapolis and the Doctor and his wife 
said they would look after them around the thea¬ 
ter and treat them the same as if they were their own 
children and they did. The girls had always been 
crazy to go to work at Ingersoll Park which was 
run by the Des Moines St. R. R. and Fred Bu- 




36 


My Twenty-three Years' 


chanan who afterwards owned the Buchanan Cir¬ 
cus. Fred had his circuit on the Orpheum Circuit and 
he had at this time a black face team that had been 
suddenly called to New York on account of sick¬ 
ness of their mother and he wired the girls to come 
on and he would give them two weeks at Ingersoll 
Park at $100.00 per week and the girls came on and 
made good the first night and the first Sunday they 
were on the Jack Hoffler show was in the city and 
they all went out to the Park to see the show and 
when the girls’ turn came they received a very hearty 
welcome and before they were through Hoeffler 
turned to me and says, “Mac, I want those girls 
with me this winter,” and says “How much do you 
want per week for them?” I says ”$75.00 and 
you and your wife agress to look after them.” Mrs. 
Hoeffler spoke up and says, “Mr. McNutt, I will 
take as good care of them as if they were my own 
girls so you do not need to worry about them 
while they are with us as they will be in good hands.” 
So he told me to have them come to Webb City, 
Missouri the next week. So I took them down and 
we arrived there just in time for supper and the 
girls were all the attraction. They looked so much 
alike that no one could tell them apart. There was 
only 1 -4 of an inch difference in their height and 



Experience as a Detective 


37 


1-2 pound difference in weight. It used to keep 
my wife and myself busy to tell them apart and a 
stranger had no chance at all. The leading man 
says, “I have them now,” and I says, “I will bet you 
a box of candy for the ladies that you cannot tell 
them apart.” He said, "I will take the bet.” So I 
took the girls out in the hall and then came back 
with one of them and he said “That is Hattie.” 
He says, “I know better, you fool me. Hattie has 
a mole on her right cheek.” So I called Hazel in 
and says, “Hazel, show the gentleman the mole on 
your cheek” and she had one in the same place. 
“Well,” he says, “I give it up, you win. I will buy 
the candy.” And he did. The next morning the 
girls wanted to see Joplin which was only about 
7 miles from Webb City so I took them over to 
Joplin and the Interurban runs over there so we 
went over and the first thing we knew we run 
into a big bunch from Des Moines. They owned 
several large mines. I introduced the girls and says, 
“Boys, better come over and see the show we have 
one of the best on the road, and besides I want you 
to see the girls work out.” So that evening they 
chartered two of those big interurban cars and 
packed them with their friends and when the show 
opened they were turning them away and when 



38 


My Twenty-three Years' 


the girls came on with their stunt, I thought the 
crowd would tear the house down and the girls got 
four encores and then the crowd tried to get them 
back again and after the show Hoeffler says, “Well, 
Mac, you have got the best sister team in the coun¬ 
try. The reception they got last night was won¬ 
derful. I never saw anything like it before. They 
are certainly wonders,” and they worked that sea¬ 
son for Hoeffler and the next season Sport North 
came to me and says, “Mac, I want those girls next 
season,” and I says, “Sport, it will cost you $100.00 
per week.” He said that was alright he would pay 
it and for me to come to the hotel that afternoon 
and he would have a contract ready for me and after 
dinner we both signed the contract. The girls 
stayed with Sport five years and after closing with 
Sport, my son went with the girls and they were 
together for three years in vaudeville. 




Experience as a Detective 


39 


CHAPTER III 

Experience of a Detective After Twenty- 
three Years Service in Police 
and Detective Work. 

By G. W. McNutt 

Ex-chief of Detectives, Des Moines, Iowa. 

Thirty-eight years ago, this last April 1st, I was 
appointed on the Police Department at Des Moines, 
Iowa, under Mayor John Campbell. Solomon 
Stuttsman was Chief, Police Captain was Robert 
Thompson and George Morgan, Sergeants. My 
first beat was on Eeast Fifth and Locust. I re¬ 
lieved Jerry Flannery and served one year on that 
beat with some very good experience. 

A gambler by the name of Wilbur Lewis, had 
located some gambling rooms on East Locust Street 
between 3th and 6th Streets upstairs. The police 
had been trying to capture the bunch for some time 
but had not been able to catch them in the act. So 
I thought I would try my luck at it. They had 
three doors to go through and always kept them 
locked, so that if the officers did get inside they had 




40 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


time to get everything out of sight and they would 
then have no evidence to convict them. So I se¬ 
cured a ladder and in company of Clint Bragg, the 
man on the next beat, we went up on the roof. 
There was a large sky light that we could look 
through and see everything in the room and when 
we arrived at the skylight there was a poker game go¬ 
ing on and we could see the money on the table 
and everything in the room. We watched them for 
an hour and then I telephoned the captain for the 
wagon and we broke in the doors and arrested them, 
taking all the cards, money and tables. We brought 
them into court the next morning and the Court 
fined them $10.00 each and Lewis was fined $25.00 
for running the place. 

About a week after that, the whole bunch went 
out on a big spree. We had a Police box at that time, 
on the corner of 6th and Grand Avenue. The gang 
got up on the corner and were making all kinds of 
noise and I could hear them for two blocks away 
and being time for me to report at the box, I went 
to 6th and Grand and the gang seen me coming and 
got out of sight and when I went in the box to re¬ 
port, I heard a revolver shot and heard the bullet 
strike the box. I turned around in the box and seen 
where the bullet had come through and saw it lodged 





Experience as a Detective 


41 


in the other side of the box. I immediately went 
outside, pulled my gun but could not find any¬ 
one. 

About ten years after that, one of these fellows 
came to me and says, “Mac, I have a story to tell 
you. Do you remember the time about ten years 
ago when some one shot at you while you were at 
the telephone box?” I said, “Yes, and if he had 
shot two inches closer, he would have killed me.” 
“Well,” he said, “I am ashamed of it now, but I 
am the man that fired that shot that night and I 
sure was tickled to death when I learned it had not 
hit you." 

The way I escaped being killed was this. At the 
time I was talking on the telephone and was close 
up to the side of the box, the ball went through 
the center of the box missing my spine about two 
inches. “Well, old boy,” I said, “It was a good 
thing for you I did not see you when I came out or 
I surely would have killed you as I had my gun in 
my hand ready to shoot. (This happened during the 
13 years of prohibition in Iowa.) 

A short time after, I procured a search warrant 
for A1 Sexhaurs’ place at 416 E. Locust St. A1 
was running a beer joint and we had been searching 
him pretty regular so he went to work and bought 



42 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


some three inch planks and a carpenter made him 
a door and had it covered with boiler iron and large 
heavy steel hinges and then said to me, “Now, Mac, 
come and get me if you can,” So that evening I 
went over to the headquarters and had the Chief of 
Police detail me six men. We procured crow bars, 
axes and sledge hammers and started for the east 
side. When we arrived I produced my search war¬ 
rant and we went after it and in about fifteen min¬ 
utes we had the door all torn to pieces. We searched 
the place but could not find any liquor, so I said, 
“Well, boys, I know it’s here and I am going to 
have it before I quit.” So we started in again and 
he had two faucets in his wash sink and I got a 
hunch to examine them. I tried the cold water and 
it was alright but when I tried the hot water, the 
beer began to run but we could not find the keg, 
so we started to trace the pipe. We followed it up 
to the fifth story and there, out on the roof, we 
found the keg. We arrested Sexhaur and the next 
day, he closed the joint and went out of business. 

A few days after that, I procured a search war¬ 
rant for John Hardy’s place on East 5th, between 
Couet Ave. and Walnut. John was running a 
tough joint. His patrons were mostly from the 
packing houses and mines so I secured a warrant and 



Experience as a Detective 


43 


I took Clay Lewis, a negro, Harry Cohen, a Jew, 
Tom Ford, an Irishman, and myself. When we ar¬ 
rived at the place, I told the boys to go in the back 
way and I would go in the front and serve the war¬ 
rant, so we started and as I went in I pulled the war¬ 
rant and walked up to Mardy and commenced to 
read it. The house was full of people, about fifty 
of them in a twenty-foot room and all at once, six 
of them jumped on me, two of them pinned my 
arms, two of them my legs and the other two my 
body. I could not get hold of either my club or 
gun. About that time, the other boys came in from 
the rear and Dan Ford thought they were hurting 
me and he pulled hi* gun and leveled it on Hardy 
and just as he pulled the trigger, Clay Lewis knock¬ 
ed his hand up and the ball went into the ceiling 
and I never saw a crowd disappear so quickly in 
my life. They went out the doors and some of them 
jumped through the windows taking sash and all 
and it wasn't two minutes until the room was 
cleared. We got three kegs of beer and arrested 
Hardy. 

About that time the wholesale men were very 
busy and shipping it in by car lots, so the captain 
detailed A1 Miller and myself to clean them up and 
believe me, we made life miserable for that bunch 



44 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


for awhile. We were seizing four to six carloads 
a week for some time. I will never forget one car 
we had seized from Frank Mattes who used to run 
a brewery in Des Moines. The car was on the Des 
Moines Union tracks on East 3rd street. I seized 
the car about 6:00 A. M. and placed Sundberg on 
watch until we could unload it. In the meantime, 
Mattes had telephoned to the yard office of the rail¬ 
road to move that car immediately and take it to 
Madrid, Iowa, on the double quick. The switch 
engine went over the river and Sundberg was inside 
the car. They backed down and hitched on the car 
and were gone before we knew what they were do¬ 
ing and they sure run some with that engine and 
Ed was afraid to jump for fear of getting hurt. 
About two miles out of the city, they had a very 
heavy grade and they slowed up. He jumped off 
and had to walk back to the city and if there ever 
was a mad Swede, he was it. Well, we laid for 
that car and about three days after, they brought it 
in at night and started to unload it and we caught 
them in the act and confiscated it. 

We had another bad joint down on East 5th 
near the C. R. I. U P. tracks. It was run by the Day 
Bros, and we kept after them until they closed up. 

There was another one on Des Moines and 2nd 



Experience as a Detective 


45 


Streets that was run by the notorious Jack Shea, 
prize fighter and bully. I think I have searched 
him at least fifty times and finally closed him by 
injunction. We used to keep him in jail half the 
time, then we had another by the name of Otto 
Munger who run both wholesale and retail. We 
kept after him until we closed him by injunction. 

Then there was Jacob Shersbach. The boys had 
searched him, I guess, a hundred times and never 
could find his plant. So I procured a warrant and 
went up to his joint. It was located on West 7th 
Street between Walnut and Mulberry. I searcher 1 
for two hours and found two plants. One of them 
he had a window sill that slid out and could not 
be told from the others but I slid the sill out and 
there was 57 bottles of beer. The other plant was 
in a closet under the stairawy. They had a false 
partition that looked like the rest of the walls. It 
was made of ceiling and four of the boards were 
loose and could be slid back and I found four cases 
of beer. 

Then, we had James O'Callaghan who had a 
joint at 607 Walnut and in the back room he had 
an old well and when the officers would come to 
search them they wuld knock the head of the keg 
in and dump it in the well which was 30 feet deep. 



46 


My Twenty-three Years' 


He always kept a man on watch and as soon as the 
officers showed up he would give the alarm and the 
bartender would knock in the head and dump it in 
the well. So I made up my mind I had to get the 
watchman out of the way. So I took another of¬ 
ficer with me and waited until he got out on the 
street. We arrested him on the quiet, the other of¬ 
ficer took him to the station and I sneaked in the 
back way and made a run for it. I was in the back 
room before they saw me. The bartender grabbed 
the sledge and I pulled my gun and covered him and 
made him drop it. They had just put a keg on tap 
and I got a full eight gallon keg and arrested both 
O’Callaghan and the bartender. We got him sev¬ 
eral times after that and finally got an injunction 
against him. 

Then, there was Jim Faulkner who ran the Sil¬ 
ver Pitcher gambling house upstairs and a booze 
joint on the first floor. We used to search them 
four or five times a day. He finally moved up to 
213 Walnut Street. One day we searched him 13 
times and got beer in every keg and a keg every time 
and the last time, I arrested him and took him to 
jail. He put up a $1,000.00 bond and was tried 
in court and convicted. We finally got an injunc¬ 
tion against him. 





Experience as a Detective 


47 


1 could sit here and cite cases all night but I only 
wanted to tell my readers of a few cases to show 
them that Prohibition could be enforced, if the of¬ 
ficers wanted to. 

I served the balance of my first four years in uni¬ 
form and was on every beat in the city. I was 
then sent to the Highland Park beat in Highland 
Park College. There were about 1,000 students 
attending it and on Hallow'een night they sure 
raised the devil. 

Prof. Langwell was president. The boys got 
together and caught a cow and took her upstairs 
to the toilet room and tied her up. When they got 
her out they went up on top of the college and stole 
the hammer out of the bell and I got after them. 
One of the boys jumped four stories with the bell 
hammer and got away. There was a drug store 
about four blocks from the corner and when I went 
to report I saw him through the window. 




48 


My Twenty-three Years' 


CHAPTER IV. 

Isaac LeHillis came to me and wanted me to man¬ 
age his campaign and said he would make me Chief 
of Police if I would manage it and put some money 
in the campaign. I told him I would so I took 
charge of the headquarters and had thirty-two pre¬ 
cincts to organize and all the workers to look after 
and we had a hard fight. As we nominated by 
delegates at that time, we had a warm campaign. 
John McVicker was our opponent and it looked 
for awhile as though we were beaten. They had 
a very strong organization and when convention day 
came, we of course, put in the forenoon in making 
a temporary organization and in the meantime, I 
had been working among the delegates and had 
pledged enough delegates to nominate with the ex¬ 
ception of two. There were five Negro delegates 
and they had their hands out for a piece of money 
so I bought the five for $50.00 and when we ad¬ 
journed at noon, I went to Hillis and told him what 
I had done and asked him for the $50.00 and he 
said it was alright and wanted to know if I couldn’t 
borrow it at the bank and he would hand it to me 
the next day. I told him I could but I was in the 




Experience as a Detective 


49 


bank $375.00 and had spent $500.00 of cash I 
had and promised to make it good the next day 
and I told him that it would be alright. So I bor¬ 
rowed it for 30 days and went and fixed up the 
Negroes and when it came to roll call we had three 
more than enough to nominate and Hillis was nom¬ 
inated. 

About a week previous to the convention when 
the campaign was hottest I located the room where 
the leaders of the opposition held all their private 
meetings and I procured a reporter from the Iowa 
state register and we went up and I borrowed a 
ladder so we could hear all that was going on as 
they had the blinds drawn and the windows down 
at the top and we obtained all their plans and 
speecehs from all the speakers and the next mGrning 
the paper came out with the full proceedings of the 
meeting, it made almost one page of an article. They 
were the most surprised lot of politicians there was 
in the country and as soon as Hillis was elected I 
went down the next morning to congratulate him 
and he said, “McNutt, I cannot appoint you Chief 
as I had to have the Swedes’ vote and the only way 
I could get it was to give a contract to the Swedes. 
Now this Fred Johnson had never had an hours 
experience in Police work and so I said to Hillis, 





50 


My Twenty-three Years' 


“Can you afford to do this, appoint a man to this 
important position that has never had any exper¬ 
ience?'’ “Well," he said, “that was Politics." I 
told him it was not Politics, that it was just as easy 
to be honest in politics as it was in anything else 
and always paid better in the end. By that time, I 
was getting pretty warm under the collar and I told 
him what I thought of him and walked out of the 
office and went home and you can bet I was pretty 
blue. I owed the bank $375.00 I had borrowed 
from them and $500.00 I had when the campaign 
started and out of a job. That evening we talked 
for two hours. He was trying to get me to accept 
some other position on the department and I knew 
I had to do something to take care of those bank 
notes so I told the captain I would accept it pro¬ 
vided I could run the Department to suit myself and 
if I did not run it satisfactory, he could call me in 
any time and I would resign without a word. He 
said that was fair enough so he took me into the 
Police court and had me sworn in as Chief of De¬ 
tectives. 

The first thing I did was to go to the judges of 
the District Court and ask them if they would stand 
by me in trying to clean up the city provided I pro¬ 
duced enough evidence and they all agreed to do it. 



Experience as a Detective 


51 


The first year, 1 sent 1 25 to the penitentiary. The 
second year, 187, and the third year, 46 and from 
that time on we had a very clean city. 

Thirty days after I was appointed Chief, I re¬ 
ceived a notice from the bank that some of my notes 
would soon become due so I had a very fine four 
year old colt and a new buggy and harness. I got 
up a raffle to get money to pay the notes and the 
papers came out the next morning with an article 
on the raffle and when I arrived at my office there 
was an order from the Mayor to come to his office 
and I knew what was up. So I went in his 
office and says, “Good-morning, Mayor." He 
answered, “Good morning," and then said, “I want 
to know what the meaning of this is," showing me 
the article in the paper. He says, “I am surprised 
that a man like you, holding the position you do, 
would so forget yourself as to get into anything 
like that," and he was so mad he was white. I said, 
“Mr. Mayor, do you really want to know why I 
did this?" He said he certainly did. I said, “All 
right, do you remember the day you were nominated 
for Mayor? Did I not come to you when we only 
lacked two votes to nominate and tell you I could 
buy five votes for $50.00 and you said buy them and 
when I asked you for the money you told me to go 



52 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


to the bank and borrow it and you woul pay it to 
me the next day? Have you ever paid that money 
back to me? Did I not tell you I had in use $500.00 
and $375.00 I owed to the bank. Well, I raffled 
that horse and buggy off to pay your political debts. 
Have you ever been man enough to pay me any part 
of that money back. Did Fred Johnson spend any 
of his money for you? No, you know he did not 
and you know you have made me the fall guy in this 
whole business. Now, you insignificant little pup. 
if you ever call me in your office again, I shall go 
to the newspapers and tell them what I know about 
you and it will not sound very well in print, Mr. 
Mayor, for I shall tell about a certain gambler that 
comes to your office quite often and goes back to 
a certain drawer and leaves a certain amount of 
money for the privilege of running a certain gamb¬ 
ling house. This man or gambler, is a fine looking 
man, I will admit with a fine black mustache and 
who makes his brags that Hillis would not bother 
him and that you dare not as he had you where he 
wants you.” I then turned around and walked 
out. 

About six weeks after that, I was going by the 
Iowa National Bank and the cashier rapped on the 
window and motioned for me to come in and I did. 






Experience as a Detective 




He says, “Mac, there was a man here about an hour 
ago that tried to cash a draft for $1800.00 and we 
think it was forged. We refused to cash it and we 
have found since that he cashed one on the Valley 
National Bank for $1600.00 and got away with 
it. We called your office and they said you were 
up town and sent Johnson and Bain up here. We 
gave them a description and they are out looking 
for him.” They gave me a description of him and 
I took a time card out of my pocket and seen there 
were no trains out yet but the C & N. W. would leave 
in about seven minutes. I started running to the 
office about three blocks and had my horse and 
buggy hitched in front of the station. As I ran, 
I took out my knife and ran up to the buggy and 
cut the hitch rein, jumped in and ran my horse all 
the way to the depot about a half mile. I arrived 
there just two minutes before the train was to leave, 
asked the conductor to hold the train and started 
through it and in the second coach there was a man 
with a newspaper before his face as though he was 
reading. I went back to where I could get a look at 
him and I saw he made the description. So I went 
up and sat down on the seat beside him and said, 
‘“Stranger, where are you from?” He said, “I am 
from Chicago.” I asked him what line he was 



54 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


handling and he said it was none of my business. 
Well, I said I would make it my business. I told 
him I was Chief of Detectives and he was under ar¬ 
rest. I took him by the arm and led him out of the 
car and then went to the baggage room and told 
him I was going to search him. He says if you do. 
it will be at the station which is the proper place. 
I grabbed him by the throat and threw him against 
the wall and reached in his inside pocket and pulled 
out three $500.00 packages and he said, “Well, you 
have got me and I will give you the balance. He 
took out his pocket book and handed me two $50 
bills and then said, “I have $220.00 and here is a 
watch that cost me $150.00,” and he says, “Take 
the whole thing and just let me step outside alone 
and you keep it all and no one will be the wiser.” 
We were all alone and I told him I was not that 
kind of a copper and he was going to jail so I took 
him to the station and measured him under the Ber- 
tillion system. I then went to the telegraph office 
and wired Billy Pinkerton at Chicago the measure¬ 
ments and the next morning I received a message that 
I had George English, one of the best forgers in the 
country. He had just got out of Sing Sing prison 
in New York. The way they work the game, there 
were six of them in the gang and they had a big 



Experience as a Detective 


55 


stock farm over in New Jersey and passed themselves 
off as stock farmers. They had already obtained 
about $500,000.00 and Pinkerton's men all over the 
country had been looking for them. The way they 
worked the game, one or two of them would go to 
the bank and buy a draft for $16, $18, $20, or $50 
and they had a place in Chicago where they would 
send them and take the piece out where the punch 
marks were and replace it with other punch marks. 
For instance, a 16 punch would be raised to 1600 
and a 50 to 5,000. He was sent to prison in New 
York for raising government bonds and bogus bonds 
so Pinkerton started his men out and 3 days after 
Pinkerton's men caught four more of them in Mil¬ 
waukee. We tried old man English who was 63 
years old and he was sentenced to 12 years in Fort 
Madison, Iowa, at hard work and the Valley Bank 
sent me a box of 5c cigars as a present for my good 
work and I sent them back with my compliments and 
if I had not worked fast they would have been out 
$1600.00 and it would have not hurt them to have 
handed me a couple of hundred as a reward for 
honesty and good work. That would encourage 
an officer but a banker as a usual thing is the big¬ 
gest hog in the country and does not think about 
the poor coppers that do the work and takes the 




56 


My Twenty-three Years' 


chance of being killed for protecting his money. 
Sometimes, I do not blame the poor copper for being 
crooked for some of their salaries is harly enough 
to live on but the banker does not care whether 
he is killed or not as long as he gets his money. 
Billy Pinkerton complimented me very highly and 
said it was one of the best catches that had been 
made anywhere in the country for some time. 

Another good forger I caught, was George Lewis, 
a noted forger of drafts. Lewis was at the Kirk¬ 
wood hotel in Des Moines, Iowa. He cashed a 
bogus draft for $175.00. I took up that case and 
sent circulars all over the United States. About six 
weeks after, I received a wire from Chief Reed of 
Seattle that he had Lewis for me. “Get requisition 
and come immediately, Chief in Los Angeles wants 
Lewis awful bad and is on way. Rush.” I got 
my papers and went to the Capital and secured the 
Governor’s signature and mailed the papers to the 
Governor of Washington and took the night train 
for Seattle. I took the Great Western to St. Paul 
and transferred there to the Great Northern. It took 
me three days and nights to get there although we 
did not arrive in Seattle until about 10:00 P. M. and 
was all tired and sleepy but I went to Police Head¬ 
quarters and one of the Seattle detectives by the 



Experience as a Detective 


57 


name of Hays went out with me. Chief Reed was 
not in, went and had supper and then to find the 
Chief as I had to see him. I had offered a reward 
of $50.00 for his capture. We hunted until about 
12 o'clock and finally located him at the Elks club 
so I fixed things up with him and he gave me an 
order to the prison jailer to turn the prisoner over 
to me any time I wanted him. We then started out 
to see the town in the sporting district. We went 
through a Japanese house and htey had some of the 
prettiest Japanese girls I ever saw for up to that 
time I had never seen but very few Japanese women 
and they were very intelligent. 

Well, I finally went to the hotel and went to bed 
and next morning, I was up at dawn and went to 
the jail to see the prisoner and I knew him in Des 
Moines. Met him while he was there visiting some 
friends and we sat down and I said, "Lewis, which 
would you rather do, go to Des Moines or Los 
Angeles." He said, "Des Moines, of course, for if 
I go to California, they will give me 25 years for 
I have gotten $10,000.00 in California and they 
want me very much." "Well, you sign a release 
waiving all your rights as regards to exrtadition and 
agree to go with me without any trouble." He said 
he would. I went to the chief’s office and his clerk 



58 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


made out the waiver and I went down and had him 
sign it. I told him we would go on the 9:30 A. M. 
train. He saidhewouldbeready. Hewasavery a a a r 
train. He was a very neat fellow and well-dressed 
and had a very gentlemanly appearance, carried his 
paint and powder right with him. We made the 
train alright and started for Des Moines and it was 
a long tedious trip, especially I of course, placed the 
handcuffs on him at the station but when we got on 
the train, I said to Lewis, if you will agree not to try 
and escape, I will take off the handcuffs but if not 
I will keep them on. He said he would agree to go 
to Des Moines without any trouble so I took them 
off and let him play gentleman which he could do 
to a finish and he was a nice clean looking fellow. 

Before we got across the mountains, I received a 
telegram from Chief Reed saying they had just dis¬ 
covered that Lewis had forged a draft on some busi¬ 
ness house in Seattle for $500.00 and wanted me 
to return him to Seattle but I kept on going for 
Des Moines. In the same car with us, I saw Billy 
Weare of the big commission house in Chicago of 
Weare & Company and I was quite well acquainted 
with him in Chicago, and he had his wife with 
him. We had a very pleasant trip for Lewis was a 
good entertainer and so was Billy and they never 



Experience as a Detective 


59 


knew Lewis was a prisoner until just before we ar¬ 
rived in St. Paul, I took him to one side and told 
him, he could hardly believe it. I stopped over in 
Minneapolis a day as I was all in when I left the 
jail at Minneapolis. Chief James Doyle insited that 
I was taking too many chances by not putting on 
the handcuffs so I put them on until we got to the 
train. I took them off and we had a very pleasant 
trip all the way and when we struck the Iowa line, 
we could tell the difference. The crops looked so 
much better and everything looked fine and ar¬ 
rived all safe in Des Moines and Lewis was tried and 
received a six year sentence to Fort Madison. 



60 


My Twenty-three Years' 


CHAPTER V 

Some of the Dirty Work Done by Johnston 
While I Was in Toronto Fighting 
Extradition 

I always wrote the Chief of Police every 

few days and kept him posted on how I 
was getting along with my case and wrote 

him I thought I would be home. Well 
Johnston who is a dirty rat and always sneaking 
around to give someone the worst of it and was al¬ 
ways trying to steal some others affairs gladly after 
an address had been made, went to the Daily Cap¬ 
itol and told them I had jumped the country, I had 
deserted my family and would not return and lots 
of other stuff which I do not remember distinctly, 
so will not try to at this time. My wife got the 
paper that morning and read the article and went 
right to the telephone and called Johnston up and 

said, “Ed I have just read the article you had put 

in the Capitol about my husband. Now I will give 
you until tomorrow afternoon to correct that ar¬ 
ticle for I know you are receiving word from him 
every few days, twice a week, and you know he has 
been detained there fighting extradition. If you do 




Experience as a Detective 


61 


not correct it I will be down there and start some¬ 
thing.” And the next night he came out in an ar¬ 
ticle saying that he had heard from me and that 
I would be home in a few days with the prisoner, 
that the prisoner had been fighting extradition for 
two months. Well I arrived with the prisoner and 
convicted him and he was sentenced to 12 years at 
Fort Madison and died there about three years af¬ 
terwards. 

Now, dear readers, I will give you a little his¬ 
tory of how I ran the Department during the State 
Fair at Des Moines, Iowa, and by the way it is ac¬ 
knowledged by the general public to be the largest 
and best State Fair in the United States. 

About three or four weeks before the Fair I wrote 
the following Chiefs asking for from one to two 
men to help us during our Fair: Chicago, Milwau¬ 
kee, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, St. 
Louis, Sioux City and Cincinnatti. The first year 
they sent me the following men: Chicago sent me 
Bert Cowdry, Dan Kipley and James Markham; 
Milwaukee sent me Billy Broderick and his partner; 
Minneapolis sent me Jim Howard; St. Paul sent De¬ 
tective Sweaney; Sioux City sent James Morrison; 
Omaha sent Savage and Dempsey; Kansas City sent 
Geo. Bryant and Charles Sanderson; St. Louis sent 





62 


My Twenty-three Years' 


Detective Lalley; the following were Chiefs of Police 
at this time: St. Paul, John O’Connor; Minneapolis, 
Chief Doyle; Omaha, James Donahue; Kansas City, 
John Hays whom I considered one of the best Chiefs 
in the country and who was known as such by all the 
Departments; St. Louis, John Campbell; and Billy 
Desmond was Chief of Detectives and was the best 
in the country and Joe Kipley of Chicago and Phil 
Deits of Cincinnati who sent Detective Howe. Any¬ 
one who knows these Detectives, knew I had the 
best lot of Detectives in the country and besides these 
every railroad in the city sent from one to four of 
their Detectives; the Wabash sent one; the Rock 
Island sent four; the Northwestern sent four; the C. 
B. & Q. sent two; the Milwaukee sent two and the 
Great Western sent one, so you see I had a pretty 
good bunch and they all worked under my instruc¬ 
tion. I would place one of my men with each rail¬ 
road and sometimes two. I sent from three to four 
to the Fair Grounds and scattered the balance 
throughout the city. After the crowd got to the 
Fair Ground, I would send from fifteen to twenty 
to the Fair Ground and scatter them through the 
crowd. On the big days of the Fair, Tuesday, Wed¬ 
nesday and Thursday, we would have from sixty 
to one hundred thousand people on the ground to 



Experience as a Detective 


63 


take care of. I will never forget one year the Board 
of Directors held a meeting and decided not to ad¬ 
mit any Detectives to the grounds unless they had 
tickets and always before that they would always 
send me passes for all my men for the week. So this 
morning when they issued the orders to the gate 
keepers, I happened to go out to the grounds with a 
couple of my men and the gate keepers refused us 
admission. Well, I was pretty sore. I went back 
to the city and I had two bunches of pick-pockets 
in jail that had been picked up the night before. I 
told the boys to bring them up to my office and 
told them I was going to give them a chance to get 
out of town and for them not to try to do any 
work in the city while they were going and they 
promised they would not, but I said we are not pro¬ 
tecting the Fair Ground this year on account of the 
Board of Directors having turned us down and will 
not admit my Detectives unless we buy tickets so we 
have no jurisdiction in the Fair Grounds. Well, 
that afternoon about four o’clock, the Secretary of 
the Fair sent word for me to come out to his office 
at once. I went out and he jumped up and shook 
hands and said he never was so glad to see anyone 
as he was to see me and he said he wanted me to send 
some of my men out to the grounds. He said there 





64 


My Twenty-three Years' 


Was a big gang of pick-pockets working all day and 
they had complaints by the score from the people 
that had been robbed. He showed me what they 
had found behind one of the barns which was a 
bushel basket full of empty pocket-books. He also 
said that the Directors had just had another meet¬ 
ing and had instructed him to give me all the passes 
I wanted for my men and for me to make out a list 
of all my men and he would give them all passes 
for themselves and families, which I did and then I 
telephoned to the office to send me all the men they 
could pick up and get them out quick. He found 
ten or twelve men and sent them out and I explained 
to my men what the Directors had done and they 
got busy and cleaned up the grounds in no time. 
The Secretary then informed me that he told the 
Directors they were making an awful mistake when 
they passed the resolution and told them he was well 
acquainted with me and that I would keep my men 
away from the ground and then they would be up 
against it. He said I told them they had a lot of 
men there doing guard duty and the most of them 
were right from the country and never had any ex¬ 
perience in Detective work and they could not ex¬ 
pect them to compete with a lot of crooks that Were 
as smart as anyone. He said he told them they were 




Experience as a Detective 


65 


making the mistake of their lives but the Directors 
were nearly all farmers and none of them knew any¬ 
thing about Detective work, so the next day I sent 
out twenty of my men and they never had a kick 
and there was no pocket-books reported stolen. I 
remember one big day we had. The Fair Associa¬ 
tion had gotten up a big head on collision and had 
advertised it very extensively and the receipts in the 
evening showed seventy-five thousand people. Well, 
you know that makes a lot of people. The associa¬ 
tion had built a temporary track inside the race track 
and had transferred the engines to the track. A fel¬ 
low by the name of John Connely had gotten the 
entertainment up and had bought two old engines 
from the C. & M. R. R. They were still in run¬ 
ning order but they were ready for the scrap pile. 
John got them pretty cheap and after the collision 
sold them for scrap iron. I knew a collision was 
something new for the people to see and that ac¬ 
counts for the big crowd. The C. R. I. & P. had 
built a long shed for their depot and had fixed it 
so they could admit as many as they wanted and 
then shut the gates and hold the crowd until they 
could load those in the shed. They were running 
trains every five minutes to the city and from ten 
to sixteen coaches on each train. 



66 


My Twenty-three Years' 


The street car company had built a depot on the 
same place and they were running their cars with 
trailers evry minute so you see they could handle a 
great many people in a short time but when the 
show was over everybody wanted to get home at 
once and it was the worst jam you ever saw. I 
placed my men at the different gates to watch for 
pick-pockets but the crowd was so dense one could 
not move and I was so sore the next day I could 
hardly move. 



Experience as a Detective 


67 


CHAPTER VI 

I will now give some advice to young boys and 
girls; boys always be honest and straight forward in 
all your dealings and obey your father and mother 
and especially your mother for she has the most 
care of you, if you always do this you will never go 
astray or get into trouble for there are very few 
mothers that will advise you to do wrong. It is 
very easy for you to make the first bad step but it 
is hard to overcome it after you have made it and 
it is very easy to make the second and then the third 
and then the first thing you know you become a 
crook and have all the officers in the country watch¬ 
ing you. They will get you in time. Boys there 
never was a crook born that doesn't eventually get 
caught and then when it is too late you will wish 
you had taken your mother’s advice. I have seen 
hundreds of boys after they have been caught, say, 
“Chief, oh, if I had only taken my mother's advice 
I would not be where I am today. Now I am 
shunned and pointed out as that little thug or that 
little crook by all the decent people in the country 
and when I try to get a job of some kind the busi¬ 
ness man or contractor or manufacturer will say ‘oh 



68 


My Twenty-three Years' 


you are that little thief, John Smith, or whatever 
your name is; no we cannot use you under any cir- 
circumstances; we do not want any thieves in our 
business for we could not trust you under any cir¬ 
cumstances, ". I have given many a boy another 
chance to turn straight again; the most of them 
think like you do sometimes, “Oh, I know my busi¬ 
ness; I know better than father or mother; they are 
not up-to-date; they are not up to the lines; I have 
more brains than both of them; they cannot tell me 
anything; I am able to look after myself," but you 
are not; you need somebody to advise you; somebody 
to see you go to school and behave yourself while 
you are at school; your teacher will look after you 
when you are not at school; somebody that will 
teach you to be a little gentleman for then people 
will point you out and say what a nice little gentle¬ 
man that boy is; he must have a kind father and 
mother to look after him. Now I will leave it to 
you which sounds the best, “there goes a nice little 
gentleman” or “there goes that dirty little thief, 
Johnny Smith, I don't want my boys playing with 
a thief like him," so the first thing you know you 
are ostracized from society. In other words, will 
say to your children, you must not go with him or 
have anything to do with him. 



Experience as a Detective 


69 


And now girls your time has come for a lecture 
and you must take your medicine. In the first 
place, girls, the most of you think of nothing but 
dress and having a good time and becoming a flap¬ 
per. That is some of your highest ambition, to 
meet some young fellow with an automobile, go 
out and stay the biggest part of the night and have 
what the boys call a hell of a time and the first 
thing you know some boy will insult you or get the 
best of you or you will get killed or crippled in an 
automobile accident. You can read of it every day 
in the papers; of running away from home with 
some fellow, whereas if you had taken father's and 
mother’s advice you would have escaped all this. 
If there is anything on earth that disgusts me and 
nearly all grown people look at it the same way is 
to see a girl coming down the street with a half 
pound of paint on her face, dressed like a flapper 
and her hair bobbed and flapper boots on and then 
she thinks she is making a hit or a mash on some kid 
and looking for a hell of a time. Now if you only 
knew what people thought of you, you would 
change your habits at once; you can hear these re¬ 
marks: “look at that tit bit” or “look at that would- 
be-flapper’’ or “there goes a little sport.’’ Here is 
where mother gets the blame and the mother is not 



70 


My Twenty-three Years' 


to blame any more than to allow them to start that 

« 

kind of business; if she had taken the girl across 
her knee a few times she might have been a better 
girl and made her help do the house work instead 
of being on the streets with a half pound of paint 
on her face trying to make a mash. I will make a 
bet that one-fourth of the girls in Kansas City can¬ 
not make a dress or cook a meal or clean up the 
house. Now the mother is the most to blame in that 
case for not making the girl work a little and learn 
a little about the house work; that is what makes 
so many girls go wrong, yes, and women to, if you 
please, this little love of dress when they are mar¬ 
ried and have not been taught these things before 
hand; perhaps their husband’s salary will not per¬ 
mit of the expensive dressing then the woman gets 
a job or goes down town to work and they either 
board out or neglect their house. There are very 
few men who do not marry to have a home and to 
raise a family and then the woman still doesn't have 
enough so she says to herself now I am married and 
why not make some money on the side and I can 
have a good time and after the first time she thought 
it was easy and the first thing she knows she is 
diseased and gone to the dogs and then a divorce 
and that is what is making so many divorces now- 



Experience as a Detective 


71 


a-days and what is sending so many girls and women 
to hell, if you please. I raised a family of five 
children, four girls and one boy, and we never had 
any trouble with our family. Two of my girls 
were twins and the girls at that time were twelve 
years old, that was in 1900, I resigned as Chief of 
Detectives from the Des Moines Department and Ben 
Wallace of the Wallace circus wired me to come on 
and take charge of the show, that is the official De¬ 
partment Chief who is the man that pays all the 
licenses, looks after the Police and Sheriff offices 
and constables and looks after all claims on acci¬ 
dents. So after we got down South, I think I was 
in Georgia, my wife wrote me that the girls had ap¬ 
peared before the world’s Congress with their sing- 
and dancing and they made such a hit they received 
four encores and made a big hit with all the mothers 
present and I wrote my wife immediately to put 
them under the best singing and dancing master she 
could find. Two years after they joined Dr. Rucker’s 
Stock Company in Mineeapolis and they have been 
on the road ever since and part of the time they 
were with their brother and were known as the 
McNutt Trio and played the Electric Park. It was 
the old Electric Park I am mentioning. These 
things simply show young girls that a girl can go 



72 


My Twenty-three Years' 


on the road in the show business and still be good 
girls for my girls had all the chances in the world 
to go to the bad if they Were inclined to do so. 



Experience as a Detective 


73 


CHAPTER VII 

I will now give you the history of one Pike 
Lynch. Pike was an old timer and has at one time 
been assistant chief of the Fire Department and made 
one of the best assistant chiefs we ever had. He 
had saved several lives and had done some very good 
work and had quite a reputation among all the Fire 
Departments. Personally he was a good fellow, 
well met with everybody and was very well thought 
of at that time. He finally got off the Department 
and went to gambling and he and James Hinsley and 
Billy Lambert started a big gambling house on 
Fourth Street and Bob King and Ira Stitzell ran 
another one on the corner of Fourth and Walnut. 
For a few years Lynch was in that gambling busi¬ 
ness and then for several years he operated a booze 
joint down on 6th and Elm Street and then he got 
in the worst gang of crooks that we ever knew; safe 
blowers, pick-pockets and thieves of all descriptions 
and they were making us all kinds of trouble, so 
I met Pike on the street one day and I said to him 
“Pike, you have got to disperse that gang and run 
them all out of the city or I will make you all kinds 
of trouble and believe me I will get you and send 




74 


My Twenty-three Years' 


you over the road sooner or later. I know your 
gang is pretty well organized but you are not so 
smooth as you think you are. Now this is the 
last time I am going to warn you. You may think 
I will not take any action but there is where you 
are fooled. You may think that your political pull 
will pull you through but you know that I do not 
pay any attention to these political pulls and when 
I do start I will make it so hard for you that you 
will wish you had paid some attention to me." 

Pike did not pay any attention but went right 
on and so I took three men and got a search war¬ 
rant and went after him and we searched for about 
two hours and we turned the house upside down and 
finally we moved the bed in the parlor and took up 
a brussel rug and there was a trap door and I sent 
one of the boys down in the hole and there was * 
wagon load of goods under the floor that the thieves 
had stolen and hidden away. There was stuff of 
every description, velvet rugs, lace curtains, bolts of 
silk, gingham and calico, bolts of muslin and most 
everything you could think of and after we had 
emptied that hole we kept up the search and found 
a step in the stairway that was loose and there was 
a big hole close underneath that which was full of 
goods, bed blankets, bed spreads, overcoats, shoes 




Experience as a Detective 


75 


and many other different articles and I arrested Pike 
and one of his men and took them to headquarters 
and we tried him and sent him up for five years. 
John Drake was Governor and I went over to the 
Governor's office and explained the situation to the 
Governor and asked him to give him a chance and 
parole him, being this was the first time he had been 
convicted and told him all the circumstances, so he 
made out the parole and turned and handed me the 
papers and told me to give it to him myself and for 
me to tell him that if he ever gets into trouble again 
that he could not expect any mercy from the Gov¬ 
ernor; so I took the parole and put it in my pocket 
and thanked the Governor and went over the river 
and met Pike and I said to him, “Supposing I could 
get you a parole, do you think you could keep 
straight and keep away from that bunch and behave 
yourself from now on?" He told me that he would 
guarantee that if I could get him out he would never 
mix with the gang again nor any other gang and that 
he would try to live straight from now on and that 
he would try to be of some use to the community. 
He said if I could get his parole for him he would 
never forget it and so I pulled the pardon out of my 
pocket and handed it to him and said to him, “Pike, 
all that costs you is to keep your word and straighten 



76 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


up and behave yourself, and he said, “Never again 
—because you have taught me a lesson which I will 
never forget as long as I live. I have found you to 
be the best friend I ever had.” 

About this time my case got into court and I was 
kept quite busy with the court. I finally won out 
and in the meantime the Jews got busy and raised a 
fund to fight the case to a finish. They took an 
appeal on the case and when I won again they ap¬ 
pealed to another court and so on until I had 
whipped them in four courts; they then appealed to 
the court of last resort and I beat them there. In 
the meantime I had run out of money and wrote the 
city treasurer to send me my check for my salary 
which he did. I then wrote May MacVicker to send 
me money to pay my bills so I could get home but 
he refused to send it. I then wrote the Governor 
to see if he would not advance enough to get me home 
as the State was bound by law to pay all expenses 
when I returned the prisoner and convicted him and 
he refused to send it and I was becoming desperate; 
here I was in a foreign country with about two or 
three dollars left and I owed a big hotel bill and my 
attorney bill of $175.00, my stenographer bill of 
$80.00, my hotel bill was $82.00 and only $3.00 
to pay it with. In the meantime I had told Dick 



Experience as a Detective 


77 


Disotte, the landlord, about the condition I was in 
and he had talked it over with Mrs. Hill my lady 
friend from Pittsburg and the next morning I ate 
breakfast with her and her mother and after break¬ 
fast we were standing there talking and she said, 
“Let me fix that necktie, it don't look good to me." 
I said, “All right, go to it, and after she was through 
I went to my room and I reached in my pocket for 
a tooth pick and there was a roll of bills amounting 
to $100.00 in my pocket. I never was so agreeably 
surprised in my life and I knew in a minute where 
it had come from so I went right down to their 
room and asked her what she meant by it and she 
told me Dick had told her of the trouble I was hav¬ 
ing and she said she was going to help me out of the 
hole if it cost a thousand dollars. I sure thanked 
her a dozen times. 

I then went right down to the telegraph office 
and wired B. Seigle who had put up the cash and for 
Seigle to wire me three hundred and fifty dollars at 
once or I will leave here tonight without the prisoner 
and would pay back when I got expenses from the 
state. I went back to the hotel and about two hours 
after I received a message from the telegraph company 
that I was wanted at the office. I went down and 
there was the money. Well, I was the happiest man 



78 


My Twenty-three Years' 


in Toronto. I went right down and paid my at¬ 
torney and my stenographer and then went up and 
paid my hotel bill; in the meantime Mrs. Hill and 
her mother had made up their minds to go back to 
Pittsburg and were worried about their baggage pas¬ 
sing the inspection; they had five trunks full of 
stuff and mostly new goods, so I told them not to 
worry as I was pretty well acquainted with the in¬ 
spectors and I thought I could fix it for them, so I 
went down and saw the inspector and made ar¬ 
rangements with him to pass the trunks without 
opening them; then I went back and obtained a 
baggage wagon and took the trunks down myself 
and had the inspector seal them. Mrs. Hill was 
very much pleased and she said I had saved her $500. 
I wanted to pay her back the hundred she had 
slipped in my jacket but she refused to take it and 
said that was a little present she and her mother 
were making me for being so nice to them and had 
saved them so much on duty on their trunks that 
I was entitled to it. She said they had plenty of 
money and would not miss it. Three or four 
weeks previously to this Mrs. Hill asked me to go 
with her to see Prof. Burns who is a hand reader. 
I accepted the invitation and that evening we went 
to his office. Nothing would do but she had to 



Experience as a Detective 


79 


have my hand read. I never was much on any of 
this kind of stuff but to please her I went in the 
private room and sat down and he took my hand 
and examined it about ten minutes and then com¬ 
menced: “You are a married man and have a fam¬ 
ily of five children, four girls and one boy, your 
youngest are twins and you can hardly tell them 
apart; your wife is a small woman but she is a real 
mother; she is dark complected and has black hair; 
your oldest daughter is dark with a very heavy head 
of hair, in fact she can sit on her hair; she is taller 
than her mother; the next younger is a little small¬ 
er than her sister, her hair is not as dark as her sister's 
but very heavy and she is the home girl and is very 
much interested in her school work; your son is a 
good stout healthy boy about five feet eight inches 
tall and weighs about one hundred and fort 
pounds, he is a very bright boy; your twin daughters 
are a wonder, they are dark complected, have long 
black hair, grey eyes, one of them has an eye that 
is a greenish color and looks much like you and 
their mother can hardly tell them apart ; your business 
here is some secret work and you are having 
considerable trouble but will be successful in the 
end and will get straightened out and will get a re¬ 
ward for your trouble: you are also having trouble 



80 


My Twenty-three Years' 


with two men at home; they are trying to give you 
the worst of it while you are gone; they are con¬ 
nected in some way with your business and when 
you arrive home there will be a big row between 
the three of you but you will win out; you are a 
man of very good judgment and if you will follow 
your own judgment you will always be a success.” 

I want to say if some one had knocked me down 
I would not have been any more surprised as he 
told me everything almost as well as I could have 
told it myself; now I had never seen or heard of 
this man before but he went on to explain to me 
how he did this work; every line in the palm of 
your hand denotes something and he even told me 
my exact age. I then told him my business and he 
said he could make out it was secret work and that 
was all that he could make out. I told him his 
work was wonderful, he had told as much about 
myself and family as I could have told myself. 

I sure played a good joke on myself when I started 
home with my prisoner; I went over the Grand 
Trunk to Chicago and we crossed the line into the 
United States and the inspector came aboard and I 
had left my grip open as most of them do so he 
would not have to wake me up. I had two quarts 
of Canadian Club and I had opened them and took 



Experience as a Detective 


81 


a drink out of each of them and I had some cloth 
for my wife and the girls and a present for the boy 
and I had laid in some clothes for myself but had 
them all a few’ days before starting; everything pass¬ 
ed but the material for the dresses and I had a re¬ 
ceipted bill from the Eaton Department Store where 
I had bought them and my warrant from President 
Roosevelt for the prisoner and when he woke me up 
and wanted duty for the cloth to the amount of 
fifteen dollars I showed them to him and he said he 
did not care who I was or where I came from, he 
wanted fifteen dollars and if I did not pay he would 
seize the goods and I got sore and he said the goods 
were worth more than the bill showed so I told him 
to take the goods and show them but if he did not 
send them to the collector at Des Moines I would 
take it up with President Roosevelt, so when I ar¬ 
rived home with the prisoner, I went next door to 
see the collector and told him how the collector had 
acted after I had showed him the bill from Eaton 
& Co. Well, he let me off for $5.50 and he re¬ 
ported that the inspector had been fired. I con¬ 
victed Speigle and he was sentenced to 10 years in 
the penitentiary and died there a few years after¬ 
ward. As soon as he was convicted I went to the 
Clerk of the Court and got a certificate showing he 



82 


My Twenty-three Years' 


had been convicted and sentenced and mailed it to 
the Board of Underwriters of New York and about 
three days afterwards I received a draft for five 
hundred dollars. I went to the bank and had it 
cashed and it made a roll about all I could hold. 
I put it in my pocket and went to headquarters and 
went into the chief's office and Ed Johnston was 
in there with the Chief. I pulled out the roll and 
shook it under their noses and I said, “There is the 
five hundred you two tried to steal. Now let 
me tell you something, if you had been honest and 
behaved yourself and been good fellows I intended 
to give you both a piece of this roll but as it is I 
would not even buy you a drink, you two thieving 
curs." I want to say that Johnston went so far 
as to go to the Daily Capitol newspaper and tell 
them that I had left my family and gone to a foreign 
country and would not return; my wife saw this 
next morning and called Johnston on the telephone 
and told him she would give him until the next 
morning to correct it and if he did not she would 
come down to headquarters and start something her¬ 
self. And that afternoon he wrote an article stating 
that McNutt had been detained on a requisition fight 
but would be back in a few days with the prisoner. 



Experience as a Detective 


83 


CHAPTER VIII 

The Murder of John Smith, the Oldest 
Engineer on the Rock Island Railroad. 

His wife’s name was Betsy and he had 
a daughter named Cora who was quite a 
good looker and a fine dresser and her mother 
and her put up a job to kill the old man by giving 
him poison in his coffee gradually. The old man 
had been on the sick list for some time before they 
commenced giving him the poison; they had been 
giving it to him about two weeks when they gave 
him the big dose that killed him and the doctor 
after making an examination told the coroner that 
he might have to hold a post mortem examination as 
he mistrusted everything was not right and so the 
Governor called a post mortem and when they had 
cut him open they found all kinds of arsenic in his 
stomach. The Governor called me in on the case 
and I went to work and I found he had a $5,000.00 
life insurance policy and afterward I found out that 
Cora and her mother killed him to get the life in¬ 
surance, and had intended to go to California and 
have a good time. Betsey was as big a sport as 
Cora was and they used to entertain men at their 



84 


My Twenty-three Years' 


home when the old man was out on his work and 
were having a big time; well, when their trial came 
up Betsey saw we were going to convict her anyway 
so she took the whole thing on her shoulders and 
swore she had done the whole thing herself and 
that Cora had nothing to do with it and of course 
that cleared Cora and she was turned loose and her 
mother was given a life sentence. Cora went to 
Omaha after her mother was sent to prison and went 
in a sporting house and I never had given up the 
idea that Cora was as guilty as her mother so I had 
a friend of mine keep tab on her; he used to go down 
to the sporting house and jolly her along and she got 
to drinking pretty hard and one night when she 
was drunk she acknowledged to him that she had a 
hand in it and had given some of the poison her¬ 
self and said she thought she was going crazy. She 
said it was on her mind all the time and she could not 
sleep that was why she had been drinking so hard. 
He wrote me the next day and told me just what 
she had said and how she had acted and I immediately 
procured a warrant for her and started for Omaha. 
I went down to the house where she was staying and 
went in and introduced myself to the landlady and 
she said Cora was awful drunk and she thought I 
had better come back about 5:00 P. M. and she 



Experience as a Detective 


85 


would try to sober her up but I said no I would 
take her with me whether drunk or sober. I was 
afraid she would try and get away and I knew if 
she did I would have a hard time catching her 
again, so I told her to send Cora in and let me talk 
to her. She said Cora was not dressed, that she only 
had her bathrobe on and I said I had seen many a 
woman undressed and that did not cut any figure so 
she went and got her and brought her in and Cora 
says, “Hello Chief, how are you? I am pretty drunk/’ 
“Well,” I says, “Cora you should not drimc so 
much, you are too young to go the route you are 
going, why don’t you quit awhile?” “Can’t do it 
Chief, I am too much worried,” she says. I asked 
her what was worrying her and she told me she 
knew and that was enough so I told her she had 
better tell me all about it because I was always her 
friend, so she said that I had saved her from going 
to jail a great many times and that I was a good 
Chief but she didn't want to tell me what was wor¬ 
rying her. So I told her I might know more than 
she thought I did and I also told her I knew she 
had as much to do with the poisoning as her mother 
did and I told her she was going back to Des Moines 
with me and for her to sober up and quit drinking 
and not make a show of herself on the train. “All 



86 


My Twenty-three Years' 


right," she says, "Chief I will go anywhere with you, 
for do you know I like you and do you know why? 
I will tell you, never do let anything or anybody 
interfere with your business, and I advise a man 
like that, of course, I know it was your work that 
sent my mother to the pen, but you were only do¬ 
ing your duty, and I don’t hold anything against 
you." I then pulled the warrant out of my pocket 
and read it to her and says, "Now Cora, you are my 
property until we arrive in Des Moines." "Well," 
she says, "I don’t know of anyone I would rather 
go with and I give you my word I will sober up 
and be a lady on the train.” And she could do that 
if she wanted to. "Well, chief come back to the 
room with me while I dress, as I know you do not 
want me out of your sight until we get to Des 
Moines." I answered, "All right and went to her 
room and read the paper until she dressed. I then 
said, "Cora you must eat something as I understand 
you have not eaten anything for two or three days 
and it will help you to sober up." She said, "I 
don’t feel like eating." But I insisted and she finally 
said all right, so I ordered her some black coffee, 
soft boiled eggs and some buttered toast and she ate 
that and it soon sobered her up. So we sat around 
and talked until nearly train time. I then ordered 



Experience as a Detective 


87 


a hack and took her to the train and after we ar¬ 
rived this side of Council Bluffs, I said, “Now Cora 
I want you to tell me all about the whole business/' 
So she said she and her mother were hitting booze 
pretty hard for some time and they made up their 
minds that the old man would not last very long 
and they had made up their minds to put him off 
watch with strychnine in his coffee and kill him, 
then take the $5,000.00 at once and go to California 
and have a good time but they failed and she 
was ready to take her medicine and she was going 
to plead guilty and go down with her mother to 
prison. 

And Cora said they had intended to collect the 
$5,000 insurance and go to California and have a 
big time, but the coroner at the request of the at¬ 
tending physician called a post mortem examination, 
and after examining the stomach they found the 
old man had bee npoisoned with arsenic and we im¬ 
mediately arrested Cora and her mother and locked 
them up in the county jail. We tried the mother 
first and she was convicted and given a life sentence 
at the Animosa penitentiary. In the meantime when 
the evidence was being given in the court, Cora's 
mother saw that she was going to be convicted and 
she went on the sand and admitted to the Court 



88 


My Twenty-three Years' 


that she had done the poisoning and that Cora had 
nothing to do with it. I always thought that Cora 
had as much to do with it as her mother and about 
three months after the trial and her mother was 
sent to the penitentiary Cora went to Omaha and 
went into a sporting house. She got to drinking 
very heavily and one evening in Omaha a friend of 
mine was down to this place. He knew Cora before 
she went to Omaha and while she was living in Des 
Moines, and he saw that something was troubling 
her very much and knew something about this case 
and knowing that Cora had come clear, he immedi¬ 
ately wrote me and told me how Cora had acted 
and what she had said to him the night she was 
drunk, and I write him immediately to keep as much 
track of her as he could and if anything occurred for 
him to wire me immediately. He went down to 
this house a few nights afterwards and Cora was 
drunk again, so he got to talking with her and she 
told him how she had escaped from the penitentiary, 
but the facts of the case were she had given part of 
the poison herself in coffee and that she was just as 
guilty as her mother. 

He immediately wired me and told me what she 
had said and the next day I got a warrant and requi¬ 
sition papers from the Governor and started for 
Omaha. 



Experience as a Detective 


89 


I arrived there a little after noon and immediately 
went down and introduced myself to the landlady 
and asked her if Cora was in and she said she was 
but was pretty drunk yet, so I told her I wanted to 
see her and talk to her; I didn’t care how drunk she 
was, I had seen her that way before, and I asked her 
to bring Cora in where I could talk to her. So she 
went back into another room, got Cora and brought 
her out and Cora was pretty drunk, but she recog¬ 
nized me as soon as I came into the room. She came 
over and shook hands with me and said, “How do 
you do, Chief. What are you doing out here?” I 
said, “Oh, I just happened to be in town and came 
down to see you, I heard you were here.” The land¬ 
lady then left the room and left us to ourselves, and 
I said to Cora: “Why don’t you quit this drinking, 
Cora; don’t you know you are killing yourself?” 
She said: “I can’t help it, I am so worried I don’t 
know what to do with myself.” So I then said, 
“Well, Cora, the facts of the care are I have a war¬ 
rant for you in my pocket for your arrest for help¬ 
ing to murder your father.” And she said: “Well, 
Chief, I have been expecting this and it is no sur¬ 
prise to me.” I said, “I have a witness that will 
testify that you told him that you had given part 
of this poison in your father's coffee. I want you 



90 


My Twenty-three Years' 


to sober up and get ready to go with me on the 5:30 
train." She said: "Well, Chief, you have always 
treated me very kindly. I appreciate it and am ready 
to go any place you say." I said, "I want you to 
quit drinking now and sober up so you can go back 
like a lady and not be the attraction of the whole 
train when we get on the train." She said: "I will 
do that, and when I get back and get before the 
Court, I intend to plead guilty and take my sentence 
and go down where my mother is at Animosa, for 
I have not been able to eat or sleep for some time 
now and that was the reason I have been drinking 
so heavily; it worried the life out of me and when I 
get down there I think it will be some relief to me 
anyway." I stayed around with her until just be¬ 
fore train time and I then ordered a hack and took 
her to the train and after we had gotten beyond 
Council Bluffs, Iowa, I said: "Cora, I want you 
to tell me now all about this from start to finish." 
She said: "All right, Chief, I will do so." She 
said she and her mother had been drinking and 
sporting for some time and that they had just about 
run out of money and they knew that the old man 
could not last very long so they concluded they 
would give him this arsenic in his coffee; and that 
the reason they did it was they wanted his $5,000 



Experience as a Detective 


91 


insurance money and intende dto go west to Cali¬ 
fornia and have a big time, but the Coroner's action 
in ordering an autopsy on the body and then finding 
arsenic in the body, we knew then it was all off with 
us, so after mother was convicted I just went to 
Omaha and went in a sporting house to drown my 
troubles.” We arrived in Des Moines all right, and 
I took her up to the county jail and locked her up. 
Her case came up for trial before the district court. 
She did as she said she would, pleaded guilty, and 
the Court sentenced her to life improsinment. A 
short time after her admittance to the penitentiary 
she took a lot of matches and cut the ends off that 
had the brimstone on and put the min a cup of 
water, let them dissolve and drank the contents and 
it did as she intended, it killed her and she was 
buried in the penitentiary. Her mother, after 14 
years in the penitentiary, was paroled on account of 
her health, but they never got the insurance money 
that the old man was carrying on himself. 



92 


My Twenty-three Years' 


CHAPTER IX 

And now, my dear readers, I will give you a his¬ 
tory of the first case of arson that ever was convicted 
in Polk county. 

A man by the name of Charles Speigle was run¬ 
ning a fur store over 605 W. Walnut street, and had 
a very heavy insurance on his stock. He stole all 
the goods out of the rooms at night, saturated rags 
with kerosene and set fire to them, thinking the 
building would burn down and would leave no 
trace of the stock, and that he could then collect 
the insurance on the same. But we happened to dis¬ 
cover the fire immediately after he had started it, 
and we found a couple of witnesses that saw him 
carrying the goods out and had seen him make a 
run from the building after he had set fire to the rags. 
Someone immediately called the fire department and 
there were two departments within three blocks of 
where the building was. They got there and got the 
fire out before it had burned very much and I went 
up to the firemen to make an examination and we 
discovered the stock of goods had all been removed 
and had saturated the goods with kerosene in order 
to burn up the building. The next morning I pro- 



Experience as a Detective 


93 


ceeded to hunt Speiglc up and place him under arrest. 
The court put his bond at $1,000 cash and a pawn¬ 
broker by the name of B. Seigle put up the bond and 
got him released. A few days after that I discovered 
that Speigle had jumped the country and I im¬ 
mediately got out circulars giving descriptions in full 
and Bertillion measurements. A few weeks after 
that I got a letter from Chief Deverreau of New York 
City saying that Speigle had been there and they 
had only missed him 24 hours; that he had left for 
Toronto, Canada, and that I had better wire In¬ 
spector Black of Toronto immediately. So I wired 
Black at once, referred to circular I had sent him 
with a description and all, and two days after I got 
a wire from Inspector Black stating he had Speigle 
under arrest. I wired back and told him to hold 
Speigle at all hazards; that I would get extradition 
papers and come at once on first train. It took me 
all that day to get my papers ready as it was an in¬ 
ternational affair and we had to get our warrant 
from President Roosevelt, who was then President, 
and I finally got them ready and thought we had 
them all satisfactory, with the assistance of the Prose¬ 
cuting Attorney, and we mailed the papers that night 
to Washington, D. C. I went on the Great West¬ 
ern road to Chicago and there I took the Grand Cen- 



94 


My Twenty-three Years' 


tral to Buffalo, N. Y., and then went across the bay 
in a boat to Toronto. I was pretty tired when I 
got there but immediately went to police headquart¬ 
ers and saw Inspector Black and he turned one of 
his detectives over to me with instructions to stay 
with me and see that I had a good time while wait¬ 
ing for my papers. 

Well, we certainly had a good time. He took 
me down to Phil Best’s—it was a club room for all 
the manufacturers in the manufacturing district. He 
introduced me to a great many of the manufactur¬ 
ers and they all seemed to try to make it very pleas¬ 
ant for me all evening. I went and procured rooms 
at the Queens hotel after starting to find a hotel after 
we got through with the bunch at the club rooms, 
and I procured a room there for as long as I was 
detained in Toronto. The hotel was run by Dick 
Dissette, who was the backer of Jake Gaddeur, the 
champion oarsman of Canada, and a very good sport 
at that. Dick was a member of the best club in 
Toronto, known as the Beefsteak club and we used 
to go up there and play billiards and pool when we 
had nothing around the hotel to do. A few days 
after I arrived at the hotel a widow lady and her 
mother arrived from Pittsburg, Pa. Her name was 
Mrs. Hill. I got acquainted with them and we were 



Experience as a Detective 


95 


the only Americans stopping at this hotel, and be¬ 
came very good friends. The old lady was quite 
old and did not go around much so the daughter and 
I were together a great deal, she was there laying in 
a wardrobe to take home with her and we wav 
watching the sale of which they had three days a week 
at the Eaton department store, and by watching those 
sales we could buy goods for 1-4 what we could in 
the United States. Well she bought enough ward¬ 
robe and stuff to fill four large trunks and as I had 
nothing else to do during the day after I had ap¬ 
peared in court at ten o’clock we used to take in the 
races and see some of the best steeplechase running 
I ever witnessed. One evening she asked me if 
I wouldn’t accompany her up to Professor Burns’ 
office, who was known as the greatest reader of 
hands that there was in the country anywhere, and 
on arriving there (she had been there once before) 
she introduced me and did not tell him anything 
about me, where I was from or anything of the 
kind. After we arrived nothing would do^ but 

what I must have my fortune told the same as she. 

I told her I didn’t believe in that kind of “junk” 

but I would take one chance even if it killed me, 

so I went into the private room with the professor; 
and he took my hand and examined it for about 



96 


My Twenty-three Years' 


ten minutes. He then said “Mr. McNutt, you are 
a married man and have fivei children, four of 
whom are daughters and one son. Your youngest 
are twins and look so much alike you can hardly 
tell them apart yourself. He said: Your wife is 
small, dark complected, with dark eyes, and he went 
on and described the children as exact as I could. 
He then said, “You are here on some secret mission, 
your business I cannot exactly make out. You are 
having trouble here in court over someone and you 
are going to win out in the end. In the meantime 
you have two enemies at your home town that are 
trying in every way to give you the worst of it 
while you are in Canada.” A few days after hav¬ 
ing the sitting with Burns I received a wire from 
my wife and a copy of an article printed in the Daily 
Capital of Des Moines saying I had left the coun¬ 
try for good and had gone to some foreign country 
and that I had left my wife and children and would 
not return again to Des Moines. My wife after 
reading the article went to the telephone and called 
up Ed Johnstone. Johnstone, by the way, was in 
my department and had been trying for years to 

t 

beat me out of my job as Chief and get it himself. 
Before leaving Des Moines, or in other words the 
morning that I received the telegram from Inspector 



Experience as a Detective 


97 


Black saying that he had Speigle under arrest, when 
I went down the next morning Archie Christie who 
was desk sergeant said to me, “Mac, did you know 
you had received a telegram from Inspector Black 
of Toronto?” I haid, “No, but I will bet that he 
has got that Jew Speigle for me.” He said, “Yes, 
he has and Chief of Police Johnson took your tele¬ 
gram and opened it and called Ed Johnstone and 
told him to take the telegram and go get the extra¬ 
dition papers and he could go on the trip.” They 
knew there was a reward of $500 on Speigle and 
they had got their heads together and were try¬ 
ing to beat me out of the case so that they could 
get the reward. So I immediately went into Chief 
Johnson's office and demanded the telegram and 
he said he had turned it over to Johnstone with in¬ 
structions for him to go to Toronto on the case. I 
said, “What right have you in the first place to 
take my telegrams and open them as you know 
you have nothing to do with my department in 
any shape or form, and you know it is the under¬ 
standing between the Mayor, yourself and me when 
I accepted the position of Chief of Detectives that 
you were not to interfer with my department in any 
shape or form and you know that Itold the Mayor 
that was the only way I would accept the posi- 



98 


My Twenty-three Years' 


tion as Chief of Detectives and you know that he 
agreed at that time that you and him would keep 
hands off in my department. Now I know what 
you are up to Johnstone, you and Ed are trying to 
steal the $500 reward offered by the Board of 
Underwriters of New York City. You and John¬ 
stone have got your heads together and are trying to 
beat me out of that reward, which you will never 
do.” I then asked him where Johnstone was and 
he said he had gone to the court house to get out 
the requisition papers. I immediately started for 
the court house and met Johnstone in front of the 
Kirkwood hotel and I said to him, “Ed, where is 
that telegram that Chief Johnson gave you.” He 
said, "I have it here in my pocket.” I said, “Give 
me my telegram and yo take charge of the office 
while I am absent.” “Well, he said, the chief of 
police told me to get the requisition papers and 
go after Speigle and I said, “Who is your chief, 
Johnson or me?” “Well,” he said, you are, of 
course.” And I told him, “You obey my orders or 
take your star off and quit right here.” He handed 
me the telegram and I told him to go back to the 
office and take charge until I came back, and I im¬ 
mediately proceeded and got the papers all fixed up 
with the assistance of the County Attorney and the 



Experience as a Detective 


99 


Governor of Iowa and mailed the papers up that 
afternoon to President Roosevelt, at Washington. 
D. C. And I took the .Great Western road and 
went to Chicago on the Grand Trunk, from there 
to Buffalo and from there I took a boat and went 
across the bay to Toronto. About four days after 
I arrived in Toronto my papers came from Wash¬ 
ington again, with a warrant from the President au¬ 
thorizing me to take this man back to Iowa. I 
then went before the Court at Toronto where I 
had been fighting the prisoner who was trying to 
ge out on a habeus corpus, and the Jews in Toronto 
had taken up a collection for him to help defray 
his expenses. I had to fight Speigle through four 
different courts before I got the court to turn him 
over to me. The papers, of course, had to go to 
uebec and the President sent them immediately to 
Quebec with instructions that if the requisition 
was granted by Canada to mail the papers to me 
at Toronto in care of the Queens hotel. In the 
mean time my attorney’s bill had run up to $175, 
my stenographer’s bill to $45 and my hotel bill to 
$87. I was so near out of money at this time with 
all these bills to pay that I only had $2.00 left in 
my pocket at that time. I came down to breakfast 
that morning and Mrs. Hill and her mother were 



100 


My Twenty-three Years' 


there, and by the way they were wealthy people 
getting their monthly installment from Drexel 
Morgan & Co., and money was really no object 
to them. So after breakfast Mrs. Hill and I were 
standing talking and she said, “Let me straighten 
that tie out for you.” Se untied my tie and retied 
it. I then went up to my room to shave. I reach¬ 
ed in my vest pocket for a toothpick and found a 
roll of money instead of a toothpick. I knew 
immediately 1 where it had come from and went 
down to Mrs. Hill’s room and called her out and 
said what do you mean by putting that money in 
my pocket. And she said “I have been talking 
with our landlord and he told me the trouble you 
were having and I told mother we would help you 
out, so that was the reason I placed the $100 in 
your pocket. Now we want you to stay, you have 
been so successful in your fight, and get your pris¬ 
oner and take him back. If you need any money 
just let me know, we will never miss it. If you 
ever get able to pay it back all right.” I then im¬ 
mediately went to the telegraph office and wired 
B. Seigle who had put up this cash money for bond 
to wire me at once $350.00 or I would leave that 
night without the prisoner, which would of course, 
stick him the $1,000 he had already put up. I 




Experience as a Detective 


101 


then went to the hotel Disette and I played a game 
of billiards. About an hour afterwards I got word 
to come immediately to the telegraph office and I 
went down and the money was there, so I was 
feeling pretty good. I immediately went down 
and paid my attorney and stenographer and went 
back to the hotel and paid my hotel bill, and that 
day the court had remanded the prisoner to me to 
take back to Iowa and here’s where the joke comes 
in on me. Hre. Hill had made up her mind to 
leave the next morning for Pittsburg, Pa., and was 
very much worried for fear she would have to pay 
duty on all the goods she had been buying there 
in Toronto and she had four large trunks packed 
full. So I said to her. "Now I am very well ac¬ 
quainted with the American inspector down at the 
depot and will go down and see if we can’t have 
those trunks checked without opening them and 
examining them,” and the inspector said he would 
do that for me. She had the trunks all ready and 
I had them sent down to the depot, checked and 
sealed the trunks and they went thru without any 
inspection whatever. She told me the duty would 
have amounted to over $500, which I had saved. 
And in the meantime while accompanying her in 
the buying trip I had been buying a few articles 



102 


My Twenty-three Years' 


and had them in my grip and was going to go out 
that night with the prisoner. We got to Windsor 
and the inspector came aboard the train and I along 
with the other passengers had left my grip un¬ 
locked so he wouldn't have to tarry, waking me 
up and inspecting the grip, but he woke me up and 
said, “Young man you will have to pay duty on 
these goods." “All right, sir," I said, “here are 
my receipted goods on Eaton Co. showing just 
what I paid for the goods, if you want to collect 
duty on the goods for what I paid for them all right 
I will pay it," but he said, “The valuation you 
have placed on them is not anywhere near what is 
right." And I said, “Do you mean to insinuate 
I am a liar and did not pay that?" He said, “We 
often have that put up on us, Eaton & Co. make a 
bill out for whatever you say." I said, “I am not 
in the habit of doing that, you take the goods and 
shove them but forward them to the inspector at 
Des Moines, Iowa, and I will settle with him." 
So he seized the goods and sent them on to Des 
Moines for collection and as soon as I arrived at 
Des Moines I went to the collector's office and ex¬ 
plained the situation to him, showed him the bills 
from Eaton & Co., told him what the inspector 
had said and he said, “Well, you will have to pay 



Experience as a Detective 


103 


on the bill that you received from Eaton & Co. 
and I will take their receipted bill for it." That 
is what the inspector at Windsor should have done, 
that was his instructions. I will take the matter 
up with the President and explain to him the whole 
case and I think he will fire this inspector." In 
about two months he met me on the street and told 
me the inspector had lost his job. I convicted 
Speigle and he was sent up for twelve years and 
served about three years and died in the peniten¬ 
tiary. As soon as I convicted Speigle, I went to 
the Clerk of the Court and got a certificate stating 
Speigle had been convicted and sentenced to twelve 
years and sent it to the Board of Underwriters of 
New York, who had a standing offer fo five hun¬ 
dred dollars for any one convicting a man on the 
charge of arson. I mailed them the certificate and 
in a few days I received a draft for five hundred 
dollars. I went to the bank and had it cashed and 
told the teller to give me two hundred in small 
bills and I did not care what he gave me for the 
balance. Well, it made a roll I could hardly reach 
around and I went to the office and Ed Johnston 
and the Chief of Police were both in the Chief’s 
office. I went in and closed the door and this 
was what I had been waiting for. I said, "Gentle- 



104 


My Twenty-three Years' 


men, I have you both just where I want you." I 
pulled out the roll and said, "Here is the five hun¬ 
dred you tried to steal. You have done everything 
you could to hurt my reputation before the citizens 
of Des Moines. Chief, you have been woring with 
Ed in all his dirty work and you have both done 
everything you could to get my job so you could 
have Ed appointed. Ed has been trying to be Chief 
of Detectives ever since I was appointed Chief under 
Mayor Hillis but has never been able to get it and 
Chief, you have been helping Ed ever since you were 
appointed Chief of Police. I have known it all the 
time and have always been able to check you in 
every dirty deal you have tried. Now I am get¬ 
ting tired of this and it is going to stop right here 
and now or you will both answer to me. The dirt¬ 
iest trick you ever did was when you wrote that 
article in the Capitol saying I had left the country 
and secured a job in some foreign country and had 
deserted my family and would not return to Des 
Moines, but you quickly wetn to the Capitol and 
made the correction after my wife had called you 
down and told you where to get off at. I oughe 
to have you arrested right now for slander and all 
this after what I have done for you. Do you re¬ 
member, Ed, the time Mayor Macvifar caught you 



Experience as a Detective 


105 


taking bribe money and fired you and I went to 
the Mayor and begged him to give you another 
chance, and I took off my badge and pulled out 
my keys and threw them on the table and he said, 
‘What is that for?' and I said, if you will give Ed 
another chance I will see that nothing of this kind 
ever happens again; if you don’t Mr. Mayor, here 
is my badge and keys and I will resign now.” The 
Mayor looked at me and said, “Do you mean that, 
George?” I said, “I certainly do.” And he said, 
“Well, I don’t want to lose you but I will not 
have that kind of work going on under my admin¬ 
istration and will not have it. You can tell John¬ 
ston I will give him one more chance but the first 
time I catch him in a crooked deal, off comes his 
head.” Do you remember the time you went to 
Bill Reily and told him a lot of dirty lies and tried 
to make trouble between him and me?” Now your 
dirty work ends right here and if it don’t, I will 
give you the worst licking you ever had in your life. 
Now, if you two had done what is right, I in¬ 
tended to give you both a piece of this but now since 
you have been so dirty and mean about it, I would 
not even buy you a drink out of it, you dirty curs.” 

Well, I did not have much trouble with them 
after that and now my dear readers, I will tell you 



106 


My Twenty-three Years' 


how I came to introduce the Bertillion system of 
measurements into Des Moines. 

I was down to Chicago and George M. Partens 
was at the head of the system in Chicago, he was 
afterwards made Chief of the system with head¬ 
quarters at Chicago. He said to me, “Mac, why 
don’t you introduce this system in Des Moines? You 
cannot afford to be without it.” He showed me 
how they measured them and it made quite a hit 
so when I went home I went before the city council 
and got them to appropriate one hundred and fifty 
dollars which they did and then went to Chicago 
and stayed there two weeks with Mr. Partens and 
became quite proficient in measuring. I then taught 
Ed Johnston how to measure and now my dear 
readers I will explain to you how we measure under 
the Bertillion system. 

You take the prisoner into the measuring room 
and make him take off his coat, hat and shoes. We 
then measure the head, length and breadth of right 
ear, then the right fore-arm and middle finger and 
little finger, then the left foot. We then take a de¬ 
scription of all marks, scars, tattoo marks and meas¬ 
ure them and describe them and where located. We 
also take the color of the hair and eyes or any pe¬ 
culiar disfiguring of the limbs or hands. We take 



Experience as a Detective 


107 


them to the photographer and have their picture 
taken. We have a special card printed and place the 
photograph in the center and put the measurements 
around the outside and back. 

We always make two pictures, one for our own 
gallery and one for the National Bureau of identifi¬ 
cation, which I think is at Washington, D. C., at 
present, but used to be at Chicago, Ill. At that 
time they were not using the finger print system, 
but I understand that it has been very successful, 
there is no criminal on earth that can get away from 
vertillin system. I remember one time we arrested a 
fellow that came from Chicago, on a charge of burg¬ 
lary. He denied his identity, so I measured and pho¬ 
tographed him, sent a copy to the National Bureau 
and they sent me word who this man was and said 
he done time at Joliet, Ill., and told who he was 
and the charge against him, and the court had given 
him five years for that time, and we sent him up 
for five years from Des Moines, and after he was 
convicted he admitted that he was the man and says 
there is no use to try to get away from it. 



108 


My Twenty-three Years' 


CHAPTER X 

Now my dear readers I will try and give you a 
little information as to the effects of dirty politics 
and how they work on a police department. As 
soon as a new man is elected, the mayor in nine 
cases out of ten point some one for chief of police 
that has never had any experience in police work 
and how is he going to instruct a police department 
and not know anything about it himself. A man 
who is appointed chief of police should be a man 
who has worked his way up from patrolman to chief 
of police through all the branches, sergeant and cap¬ 
tain and should be able to tell his men himself as 
to what to do in case of trouble of any kind. He 
would then know just how to instruct his men, how 
to handle them in case of emergency, but police work 
is just the same as any other work. More you work 
at it the more proficient you become, the more valu¬ 
able you will become to the city, and every police 
department should be under a civil service so that 
the politicians and grafters could have nothing to 
do with it, now while they have to work under some 
political grafter they never know wehere they are at 
and know what to do for if someone gets into trouble 



Experience as a Detective 


109 


and he knows enough to convict them they will send 
some political grafter who has a pull to you and no¬ 
tify you that if you go on the stand and testify 
against it and do they will get your job and the 
officer generally keeps his hands off, and especially 
has an officer over him that has a political pull you 
can never have a good police until you put them 
under civil service, where, when any one reports that 
you have done so and so, you have the right to go 
before the civil service commission and have a fair 
trial and you know you are going to have justice 
done you, you can tell them all to go straight up 
and do their work for you know you have some one 
helping you that will see that you get justice. Now 
at Des Moines we were not under civil service for 
a good many years, but we were going to have a 
civil service there. So I brought the matter up one 
night at roll call of police and explained to the boys 
what advantage it would be to them and asked them 
to take a vote and one member of this department 
to go with me before the Legislature and get a bill 
passed placing us all under civil service and were to 
place firemen in the same bill. They appointed 
Sergeant Thomas Denham to go with me and we 
worked for three months to get the bill passed and 
we only had two majority but that was enough. 



110 


My Twenty-three Years' 


Then the boys knew as long as they did their duty 
they were all right and could hid their jobs as long 
as they wanted to, and after twenty-two years serv¬ 
ice theycould retire with half salary pension as long as 
they lived. We then all pulled together and worked 
hard and we soon cleaned the city up, and that is 
the only way you can ever get a good department. 

I will now proceed to give my readers some of 
the rottenness of politics in the largest cities, and 
why the cities should be under civil service and as 
I am now living in Kansas City I may as well com¬ 
mence here. In the first place the Democrat party 
here is so rotten it smells and all over the country 
and it's such men as Bulger who has been shown up 
the public for years as stealing from half the country 
and cities. Why did he return the thirty-five hund¬ 
red dollars of the road contracts? He knew he had 
stolen that money and knew if he did not return 
this he was staring the penitentiary in the face and 
it is my opinion he should have been there years 
ago. There is Pendergrast and Shannon, two of the 
most rotten politicians in Kansas City. Mr. Bulger 
how much benefit did you receive out of the colored 
boys home and a great many more crooked deals 
you have been in. Then there is ex-alderman San¬ 
ford who was president of the Kansas City Cola 



Experience as a Detective 


111 


company and Bob Phelan, who was vice-president. 
I want to ask you gentlemen what became of all the 
money you took in for the sale of the stock in the 
K. C. Cola Co. I was told by your manager just 
before I quit selling stock and you both know I 
sold more stock while I was working for you than 
any other man you had, and drew more commission 
than any other man you had in the business. I 
know, you know how much I was selling for Bob 
Phelan had to sign all the checks and your manager 
told me at the time I went to work that you were 
more than making expenses with the plant at that 
time. He also told me you had sold two hundred 
and eighty dollars worth of stock and you had spent 
about thiryt in advertising, now where did the rest 
of that money go? A short time after I quit you 
went into the hands of the receiver and the plant 
was sold and everything sold for fifty thousand. 
Now where did all the rest of that money go if you 
two were not grafting? I suppose Sanford learned 
the business when he was grafting with that circus 
years ago and he still keeps is up in the coal busi¬ 
ness. Under my contract with you people I was to 
have twenty per cent for selling stock and ten per 
cent for selling extract and syrup and on all I was 
to have nine and a half per cent. You know when 



112 


My Twenty-three Years' 


I placed the contract from the Grier & Company 
eating house and news agent people I went to Minne¬ 
apolis and met their head man and took a sample 
of our syrup and there were four of the officers of 
the company and mixed them a drink of our syrup 
and then immediately made a verbal contract with 
them to furnish them about twelve car loads a month 
or about one hundred and forty car loads a year 
at one sixty-five per gallon and the cars would hold 
about fifty barrels. They took me to their plant 
at Minneapolis and then insisted that I go to Chiu- 
pewa Falls, Wis. and inspect their bottling plant, 
which I did and found one of the best up-to-date 
plants I had ver seen. I then came back to Kansas 
City and made my report to the company and thew 
made out a contract and sent one of your men up 
to have it signed. A few weeks after the contract 
was signed you made your first shipment and when 
I went into the office on 1 2th & McGee Streets and 
asked the manager how much syrup you had 
shipped to Glick Company he said barrels. Well I 
knew that was a dirty lie, so I went to the general 
freight office of C. R. & P. R. R. and goth an order 
for the agent to the chief clerk at the freight house 
to give me a list of the shipments that the K. C. 
Cola company had made to Grier & Company at 




Experience as a Detective 


113 


Minneapolis. So the clerk found they had shipped 
seven barrels at one time, nine at another, eleven at 
another and thirteen at another time, making a 
total of forty barrels, so I wanted to know what 
their game was and I went back to the office I drawed 
twenty-five dollars on account and thought I would 
see what their game was. I had to go back to Des 
Moines on some business and when I came back to 
Kansas City, the K. C. Cola Company was in the 
hands of the receiver and I lost all my interest in 
the company and have never received a cent from 
them since and never expect to, while Phelan and 
Sanders made all kinds of money out of it. I have 
mentioned this case just to show the people of this 
city was worked as well as outside of their official 
business as they are in it. I was selling stock one 
day and was in a joint on Baltimore. I had just 
sold some stock to the proprietor and his bar tender, 
in walked one of the police inspectors and a captain 
and ordered a drink of whisky and then another 
drink. The inspector threw down a five-dollar bill 
and they gave him back the dollars. 

And now, Mr. Bob Phelan, you remember the day 
that the taxicab driver came to your office with me 
and I reported to you that the driver had agreed to 
take me to Thirty-first and Main Street for $1.50. 
On returning downtown he demanded that I pay 



114 


My Twenty-three Years' 


him $3.50, and because I refused he ordered me to 
go to the station with him and to your office. You 
will remember you first took the driver into your 
office and in a few minutes he came out with you 
and you said to me, “McNutt, if you are ever brought 
in to me again by a taxi driver I shall certainly lock 
you up.” And I says to you, “Chief Phelan, I 
thought it was your business to look after these 
crooked taxi drivers. What is your object in de¬ 
fending them instead of a citizen whom they have 
tried to rob, and has done it with a threat that if I 
don't pay the bill he will take me down to Chief 
Phelan, the chief of detectives? Now any time you 
want to arrest me go to it. And I will make an 
exposure of your department that will not please 
you in the least.” I was selling stock at this time 
for the company of which Phelan was vice-president, 
and that is the Kansas City Cola Co. Now if this 
driver was not standin gin with Phelan, and he tak¬ 
ing a rake-off, I can’t understand why he jumped 
onto me and released the driver. On Decoration Day 
I was out to Swope Park, and met an old policeman 
who had been on the department for a good many 
years. We got to talking about the crookedness of 
the department and he told me of a sergeant that had 
been on the departmen tfor some time. This sergeant 
had been brought before the higher officers three 



Experience as a Detective 


115 


different times. They had caught him in the act 
of taking bribes. That he had been laid off a few 
days each time and then reinstated. That a short 
while ago with a higher officer knowing all this, they 
had appointed him lieutenant of police. And that 
was his reward for being crooked. Now I could sit 
here and tell you of case after case that the depart¬ 
ment has fallen down on. One case especially I 
will mention that happened on last Sunday evening, 
June 16th. John Monnehan had been up to 48th 
and Prospect and had taken a roll of bills out of bis 
pocket to pa yfor something he had bought there 
and the parties must have seen him with the roll 
of bills and followed him home. He waited until 
Monnehan had gone in the house and pulled a knife 
and demanded the money. Monnehan put up a 
hard fight, and the robber cut him across the abdo¬ 
men and they had to take him to the hospital to 
sew it up. Last night I was told he was in very 
bad condition. Now there is more robberies and 
hold-ups and booze-selling in Kansas City today 
than there has been for many a year. The worst 
trouble with Kansas City today is that the police 
department is composed of men controlled by poli¬ 
ticians. And you will never have any department 
as long as your Chief of Police and the other officers 
of th eforce allow the politicians to run their busi- 



116 


My Twenty-three Years' 


ness. We went through this whole thing in Des 
Moines, Iowa, and I finally made up my mind to 
go before the Legislature and have a civil service law 
enacted. I brought the matter up one night at police 
roll call, and they voted unanimously to have me 
go to the Capitol and put in my time, and they would 
furnish one man which they did, Sergeant Denham. 
He and myself then took the matter up and worked 
for two months before the Legislature and commit¬ 
tees for cities and towns. We checked our forces up 
for the bill and found that we only had a majority 
of two in favor of the bill. We also found that 
members of the Legislature from the cities and towns 
were all in favor of the bill. But the members from 
the country and the small towns were mostly against 
it. Not seeming to understand the benefits that could 
be derived from a bill of that kind. The bill came 
up the next morning for roll call and we carried it 
through by two majority. And that was the best 
thing that ever happened to Des Moines. The men 
all seemed to take an interest in their business from 
that time on and knew that they all had an equal 
chance for promotion, if they attended to their busi¬ 
ness and worked hard for the department and the 
city. 

We soon had one of the best departments in the 
country for its size and it was no time at all until 



Experience as a Detective 


117 


we had the city as clean as a whistle. And we kept 
it that way for a good many years. One year I 
distinctly remember there was only two burglaries 
for that year, and the city then had a population of 
75,000. That included the State Fair which was 
always held at Des Moines, commencing the latter 
part of August, and on the three big days they always 
had an attendance of from 60,000 to 100,000 peo¬ 
ple. Now I account for that from the fact that the 
crooks soon learned that the department was under 
civil service and that the thieves and cut-throats dared 
not go to an officer with a threat that if he didn’t 
let up on that case they would have him fired from 
the department, which had been done many a time 
previous. Now your department here in Kansas City 
is run by the influence of crooked aldermen, boot¬ 
leggers, and criminals of all kinds. Now don’t un¬ 
derstand me in saying that there are no honest men 
on the department, as good as there are anywhere in 
the country. Honest and conscientious in trying to 
do their duty. But the influences held over their 
heads by a certain element is such that it is impossible 
for them to make headway. There was a while that 
Des Moines was almost as crooked as Kansas City. 
And Chicago is just as bad as Kansas City. Mil¬ 
waukee has always been a clean city since Chief Jen¬ 
sen took charge of the department about twenty-five 



118 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


years ago. Minneapolis was a very clean town under 
James Doyle. John O’Connor of St. Paul has al¬ 
ways kept his city clean and at the same time there 
was more good crooks living in St. Paul than in any 
other city in the country. The reason of that is that 
O’Connor allowed them to live in St. Paul as long 
as they did not do any of their crooked work in St. 
Paul. Omaha has always been considered a very 
tough city, and I know from my own experience 
that it deserved that reputation, although Chief 
Donahue was always a very good chief. Denver, 
Colorado, always had a good reputation as long as 
Chief Seavey was chief. Kansas City, under John 
Hays, whom I considered one of the best chiefs of 
police, was always kept very clean as long as Hays 
was chief. And St. Louis was better controlled while 
John Campbell was chief of police, and William 
Desmond, chief of detectives. These two men had 
been with the St. Louis department for twenty- 
three years and had been promoted time after time 
and went from patrolmen to Chiefs. Now I have 
known these two men personally for a great many 
years. I have gotten a number of prisoners for them 
at Des Moines, and they have gotten a great many 
more for me at St. Louis. I had attended the Chiefs’ 
convention a number of times with them, and I 
found that they were about as well known and well 



Experience as a Detective 


119 


liked and had the reputation of being two of the 
best officers in the country. James Neilan of Sioux 
City, Iowa, was another good chief, but his depart¬ 
ment was rotten up to the time we got the bill 
through the Legislature putting us all under civil 
service. But there had always been too much poli¬ 
tics in Sioux City, and the department had always 
been run by the politicians, and the influence of the 
crooks jand gamblers. William Davenport, who 
was Sheriff for four years, was a very clever little 
fellow, and a smart officer, but like the police de¬ 
partment he was under the influence of politicians 
and grafters. Chicago at that time was about as 
crooked as they made them. Harrison was mayor 
and Joe Kipley was chief of police. I was very well 
acquainted with all the Chicago department and have 
seen some very funny grafting done by the police 
department right in my presence. I remember one 
night in Chicago I was going down the street with 
two of the detectives and we were going out for a 
little time, and one of the boys said, “I’m pretty 
nearly all in financially, and will have to make a 
touch.” We were walking down State Street and a 
couple of sporting women came along. One of the 
boys said, “Well here’s where I get some spending 
money. He walked up to them and spoke to them 
and shook hands to took them off to one side and 




120 


My Twenty-three Years' 


talked with them a few minutes and came back to 
us, and said, “They were easy, see what I have to 
spend tonight.” He opened his hand and showed 
two twenty-dollar bills. I said to them, “Boys, 
isn’t that pretty raw?” and they said, “No, we’re 
used to that; whenever we are short we just grab 
some sporting woman and make a touch.” 



Experience as a Detective 


121 


CHAPTER XI 

Now there was old Phil Deits of Cincinnati, who 
was known as one of the best old chiefs in the 
United States. And a man that always kept his 
city clean and all the crooks knew that they could 
not operate around Cincinnati as long as the old 
man was chief. While, if I remember right, Cin¬ 
cinnati's department was under civil service at that 
time. Then there was Roger Omara of Pittsburgh 
who was chief of detectives, who was known as one 
of the best detectives in the country. I am not so 
well acquainted with the police department of Pitts¬ 
burgh as I was with the detective department. I was 
acquainted with Chief Devereau of New York City, 
and O’Brien, Chief of Detectives. They were both 
under Teddy Roosevelt when he was police com¬ 
missioner of New York. And Williams was In¬ 
spector. New York at that time had a very good 
police department. I know when we held our con¬ 
vention there I met a great many of the captains 
and sergeants of the New York department for the 
department certainly entertained us great while we 
were in New York City. They chartered the larg¬ 
est excursion boat in New York, The City of Mexico, 
and took us on a trip up the Hudson River, then 




122 


My Twenty-three Years' 


back down the Hudson and away out in the bay, 
where they gave us an exhibition drill of their fire 
boats which was very interesting, and something 
some of us from the inland cities had never seen 
before. The next day Robert Pinkerton took us all 
out to the races, and w espent a very enjoyable day 
out at the race track. The following day they gave 
us a pared of all the police department that could 
be excused from duty and the night men were in¬ 
cluded in the parade. They turned out over seven 
thousand policemen in uniform, and they were as 
fine a looking body of men as I ever saw in a parade. 
There are very few of the New York department 
that are under six feet tall. All fine, well looking 
fellows, and they marched sixteen abreast. Their 
lines were kept just as straight and they were just as 
well drilled as any military body I ever saw on 
parade, but we all know that the New York police 
department has been for years under the control of 
the Democratic politicians of New York City. 

I could go on and cite you case after case of police 
departments that if it was not for politics would 
make good departments, but the politicians have too 
much control over the departments to do good work. 
In my experience I consider that politics today is 
the curse of the country, and that we must get out 
from under it if we expect to have police depart- 



Experience as a Detective 


123 


ments that will be effective and will do their duty. 
I think Kansas City, while Chief Edwards was chief, 
was making great improvements in the department. 
While not personally acquainted with Chief Edwards 
I kept close watch of his work in the papers and be¬ 
lieve that he was a good, conscientious man. And 
if he had been given a chance and been taken out 
from under the influence of the politicians would 
have made Kansas City a very good Chief of Police. 
And so on you will find it with all the departments 
in the United States. The two years that I put in 
with the Wallace-Hagenback circus gave me more 
chance to get acquainted with the different depart¬ 
ments throughout the United States than I had ever 
dreamed of getting before. As we made a different 
city every day, we made as high as twenty-eight dif¬ 
ferent states in one season, and there was only about 

tight states in the union that we did not make in 

the two years that I was with the circus. I had a 
great chance to observe the different departments and 
took advantage of making inquiries as to how the 
different departments were run, and as to what per¬ 
cent the politicians and grafters had over the dif¬ 
ferent departments. I made up my mind that about 
80 percent of all the departments in the United 

States were under the influence of the politicians, 

crooks and gamblers. I want to state here that we 



124 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


had one of our Chiefs’ conventions at Chattanooga, 
Tennessee, and were very highly entertained by Chief 
Hill of Chattanoga. His department there was run 
entirely by Chief Hill, and that the grafters and 
politicians did not run that department, and Hill 
had a very good department and the city of Chatta¬ 
nooga was kept very clean and we thoroughly en¬ 
joyed the trips that the Chief made arrangements 
for to the National Burying Ground and Lookout 
Mountain. 

I will have to tell you a good little joke on a 
little part of fourteen. When our busses and car¬ 
riages arrived at the bottom of the mountain after 
going all over Mission Ridge and the National Ceme¬ 
tery. There are thirty-five thousand Union men 
buried there that were killed in one battle. We 
made a trip of about twenty-five miles and landed 
at the foot of Lookout Mountain. The cars there 
go to the top of the mountain with cable, and the 
bottom of the cars are made with steps so you cannot 
slide out, and when the car gets near the top you 
are standing nearly on end. I sow many of those 
old chiefs turn pale as we approached the top, and 
after arriving at the top Pinkerton had picked out 
a bunch of us to go with him. There was about 
fourteen of us to inspect the top. So we started 
and walged about two miles around the mountain 



Experience as a Detective 


125 


and came to one of those mountain inns that you 
sometimes read about. It was all in one room and 
it is about 40 feet long and through the center of 
the room there is a table made of rough boards and 
a bench on each side, made of rough boards. And 
a pile of tin cups on the table. Pinkerton said, ‘‘Now 
boys, I will be back in about fifteen minutes; make 
yourselves at home.” And so in about that time he 
came back and had with him an old mountaineer 
with long white whiskers and a two-gallon jug in 
each hand. They were filled with moonshine whis¬ 
key, and he served out a drink for each one of us, 
and he waited a little while and poured out another. 
None of us had ever been up against moonshine 
whiskey before. After we had taken the second drink 
some of the boys began to feel pretty good. We 
started and went down on chute No. 2 and every¬ 
body was singing and hollering and having a good 
time. And we had a very pleasant time while we 
were in Chattanooga. We all started for home that 
night. We had a special train to St. Louis, and took 
the Wabash from there to Des Moines. 



126 


My Twenty-three Years' 


CHAPTER XII 

This is a case of the State of Iowa against Vernon 
Wilson for a charge of embezzlement. Vernon was 
a young boy of about 19 and was employed by the 
Harbach & Sons, wholesale manufacturers of furni¬ 
ture, and also had a large retain store. Vernon used 
to go to the bank and make the deposits, and he 
skipped out one night with three hundred dollars of 
the firm’s money. The Harbach’s notified me about 
the case and I took hold of it and sent circulars all 
over the country and we finally located him in Los 
Angeles, California. The Chief at Los Angeles wired 
me a short time after that he had Vernon under arrest 
and to come at once. I got my papers out immedi¬ 
ately and took them to the Governor of Iowa and 
had him sign them. I mailed them that night to 
the Governor of California who resided at Sacra¬ 
mento, with instructions to forward them at once to 
Los Angeles in care of the police department, and 
when I arrived they were there all right. The Chief 
told his driver to take me out and show me some of 
the city. It was in May and the flowers were all in 
full bloom, and some of those residences were cer¬ 
tainly beautiful. We drove around awhile, and then 
he took me up to see the Chinese quarters and we 



Experience as a Detective 


127 


went all through them and I certainly saw some 
great sights. In the Masonic Temple the furniture 
was all ebony and two hundred years old, and lots 
of other stuff that was all new to me and very in¬ 
teresting. Well I went into court the next morning 
and the prisoner was remanded to me, and that day 
we took in some of the business section, and the big 
wine rooms, and at that time you could get any 
good wine for five cents a drink. I met some old 
friends of mine and we had a very nice time. That 
evening we started for Des Moines over the Santa 
Fe and had a very nice trip. After arriving home we 
tried Wilson and he was convicted and given three 
years at Fort Madison Penitentiary. 

The next is the State of Iowa versus A1 Mickle. 
A1 Mickle was a bookkeeper for the Mott Grain Co. 
at Des Moines, Iowa. He had been stealing money 
for some time before they discovered it. Mickle 
skipped out all of a sudden and was traveling all 
over the country. I got track of him at several dif¬ 
ferent places but it was too late to get him. I sent 
circulars all over the country and one of them I sent 
to La Salle, Illinois. It seems as though Mickle was 
pretty well acquainted at this place and he had quite 
a number of friends there and the chief one day got 
a tip that A1 Mickle was in the city and was staying 
with his brother. The Chief immediately sent two 




128 


My Twenty-three Years' 


men down to the house to catch him, an dMickle 
who was always on the lookout saw the officers 
coming and ran and jumped over a fence. Upon 
lighting he sprained his ankle quite bad, but he 
started to run and gave the police a chase for two or 
three blocks before they got him. They finally got 
him and locked him up in the jail and held him 
until I arrived at La Salle. I had to wait a day or 
two for my requisition papers to come from the Gov¬ 
ernor of Illinois. The Chief told me they had a 
pretty hard time capturing Mickle and had to throw 
the gun on him before he would give up. As soon 
as my papers came I started back to Des Moines with 
him and we arrived safely in Des Moines. We ar¬ 
raigned him before the court and the trial was put 
off for one week and after the week was up he was 
tried and convicted and given a sentence of six years 
in the Iowa Reformatory at Animosa. 



Experience as a Detective 


129 


CHAPTER XIII 

The next important case we mad was the State 
of Iowa against Henry Grey on a charge of murder 
in the first degree for killing an unknown man who 
was standing on the corner of Seventh and Walnut 
in front of the Harris-Emery Department Store. It 
seems as though Grey had been drinking that day. 
It was during our State Fair, and he walked up to 
this man and they talked a few minutes, and finally 
Grey pulled out a knife and stabbed him to death. 
This happened about six o'clock, and myself and 
most of my men were still out at the fair grounds. 
And when we came in in the evening they told us 
about this murder case, and I took John Tbin and 
Bill McGrath of Chicago, and Chas. Sanderson and 
George Brian of Kansas City, and Sweeney of St. 
Paul, and Ed. Johnstone of my department and we 
started out and one of the parties who had seen this 
murder told us that Grey was the man that had done 
the stabbing. We finally located Grey’s home at 
Ninth and Grand Aevnue. We went up there, sur¬ 
rounded the house and searched it and learned from 
one of the neighbors that he had been there but had 
left a short time before we arrived and had gone to 
one of his relatives who lived a few blovks away. 



130 


My Twenty-three Years' 


We then proceeded to that place and searched the 
house while the rest of us stayed outside. There 
were quite a number of shade trees there which made 
it quite dark in the back yard and John Tobin of 
Chicago was with me and we came in from the alley 
into the back yard and we heard some people talking 
under the shade trees and we went over and threw 
our fleshlights on the parties and it was Grey and 
two or three lady friends of his who were out there 
trying to talk to him and console him in his trouble. 
W earrested him and took him to the station and 
he wa safterward tried and convicted and was given 
seven years in the pen, and they made the case out, 
or tried to, make it a case of manslaughter. The 
court did finally make some changes in the instruc¬ 
tions to the jury, and they brought in a verdict of 
guilty of manslaughter. 



Experience as a Detective 


131 


CHAPTER XIV 

The next—the State of Iowa versus Harry Levitch 
and John Walker. Levitch was a Jew and Walker 
a negro. It seems as though Levitch was in the bond 
business at police court, and Ike Finklestein was in 
the same business. They had been quarreling and 
fighting for some time. One day I was walking 
down Court Avenue and Levitch was standing in 
front of a saloon and I came up to stand and talk 
with him a few minutes, and while we were talking 
this negro John Walker came up and passed us on 
the sidewalk, and Levitch said to me: “Mac, there 
is the nigger that I have hired to give Finklestein a 
good licking.” Walker went on up to the corner 
and stopped and pretty soon a pretty good looking 
negro girl came along and Levitch said to me, “There 
is Walker's lover, what do you think of him, don't 
you think he can give that damn Jew a good trim¬ 
ming from the looks of him?” I said, “Well, he 
looks as though he ought to.” And I walked on 
down the street and came up the other side and came 
on into the office. At that time I was acting as 
Desk Sergeant in the office under James Brenton, 
who had a short time before been elected mayor. And 
in the meantime had appointed another fellow by 



132 


My Twenty-three Years' 


the name of James Maitland as Chief of Detectives, 
after having promised it to me again, after he was 
elected. So this had been the third or fourth murder 
case we had had since Brenton had been elected mavor 
and none of them had been solved since that time. 
Fred Brackett had been appointed Chief of Police 
and he and Brenton were up at the Elk's club room 
about twelve o’clock that night, and Brenton called 
me up on the telephone and ordered me to come up 
to the Elk’s at once. I said, “I cannot do it just 
now, Mayor, as there is no one in the office to take 
my place." So he said, "Lock the damned office 
up and come up anyway." And a few minutes after 
one of the boys came in and I told him to take care 
of the office until I came back. I went up to the 
Elk’s and called the Mayor and Chief of Police out 
and asked them what they wanted of me. The may¬ 
or said, "Mac, I want you to let that office take 
care of itself, and take care of the Finklestein murder 
case. The citizens are giving me hell on every 
corner for not catching some of these murderers. I 
want you to take the case because I think you can 
work it out." I said, "Well, mayor, I will not do it. 
You have appointed a man as Chief of Detectives, 
that because he had blowed around that he was a 
great cowboy out west and doing detective work, you 
thought that you had a real chief of detectives. But 



Experience as a Detective 


133 


as long as he is chief, I positively refuse to have any¬ 
thing to do with the case.” “Well,” he said, “you 
can either take the case or quit.” “Well,” I said, “if 
that’s the way you feel about it, I will take the case, 
for I have spent all the money I had to help make 
you mayor, and I have something to take care of my 
family on.” So I said, “Will you go with me, 
Mayor, if I will start on the case immediately?” So 
I said, “You are too fat to walk so you order a hack, 
and I will meet you down at the foot of the stairs.” 
He returned to the foot of the stairs with the hack. 
I gave the driver orders to drive to East Fifth and 
Walnut. And there we got out of the hack and I 
told the driver to wait a few minutes until we re¬ 
turned. I went right up to Levitch’s room and he 
was there in bed, and when we went up and knocked 
at the door, he got up and came to the door in his 
nightgown. I said, “Get your clothes on and come 
and go with me.” He said, “What for?” I said, 
“We will tell you all about that after we get to the 
station.” We arrived at the station and I told the 
night captain to lock him up and hold him till the 
next morning. I then took Brenton and we went 
all over the White Chapel district. We tried to 
locate Walker, and when the other police came to 
report at two o’clock I had the desk sergeant to ad¬ 
vise all the men on their beats to arrest John Walker 



134 


My Twenty-three Years' 


and to bring him in immediately. About three 
o'clock Railroad Marshall James Paige ran against 
Walker and brought him into the station. While 
Brenton could not understand how I could go out 
and arrest these men so quick and still have the 
right men, and I never told him where I got my tip 
from. I then went to work then to work up the 
evidence on the case so I would be sure to have enough 
evidence to convict them when the case came up in 
court, and I ran up against a sporting woman who 
was running the house in one of the buildings Harry 
Levitch owned. Her name was Bertha Offal. She 
said that the night of the murder she was sitting in 
her upstairs window at the back of the house, and 
Levitch was giving Walker instructions as to the 
time Finklestein generally went home and what route 
he took. And that Levitch had told her that he had 
a man that was going to give Finklestein a good 
beating, so she said she wanted to see the fun, and 
herself and one of the girls started to go up there. 
She lived on East Fouth Street between Court Avenue 
and Walnut Street. She said her and her girl went 
up to Fourth Street and over to Locust and they 
thought they needed a little something to brace up 
their courage with so they went into Johnson’s Drug 
Store and bought a half pint of whiskey. They 
then went up Locust Street to Seventh, down Seventh 



Experience as a Detective 


135 


to Walnut, and crossed over and got under a big 
elm tree that stood on the south side of Walnut 
Street so they could keep out of sight, and they had 
not been there but a little while when Finklestein 
came along on the north side of Walnut Street. As 
he got to the alley the nigger jumped out and struck 
him with a hickory wagon spoke. The nigger was 
a big powerful man, and struck him harder than 
he intended. He broke Finklestein’s skull and he 
dropped over dead. Bertha said they were so scared 
when they saw that Walker had killed him that they 
ran down Court Avenue to Fourth and from there 
ran home. Well, we indicted both of them before 
the Grand jury and tried Walker first. We con¬ 
victed him on on a charge of manslaughter and the 
court gave him nine years in the penitentiary at Ft. 
Madison. Levitch’s trial was put off for about two 
months, and he had communicated with a very 
wealthy uncle of his in New York City, whom they 
claimed was worth over a million dollars. When he 
arrived in Des Moines from New York he made the 
remark to a friend of mine, who afterwards told me 
about it, that Harry would never be convicted if 
money could save him. They had some twenty- 
five or thirty witnesses, and everyone of them was 
in the pay of Harry’s uncle besides drawing their 
witness pay from the state. Harry afterward told 




136 


My Twenty-three Years' 


me about himself after he had been turned loose. He 
said that it had cost the old man a great deal of 
money, but that he would have spent a hundred 
thousand dollars before he would have seen him con¬ 
victed. Harry was released by the jury which we 
were all satisfied had been bought off. 



Experience as a Detective 


137 


CHAPTER XV 

This is a little incident in the life of one known 
throughout the country as “Old Bill Trailor." Bill 
was one of the most noted “Gold Brick" men in 
the United States. He had gotten up to the time 
of this story in the neighborhood of three hundred 
thousand dollars selling gold bricks. And most al¬ 
ways it was a banker or some big business man that 
he had sold the gold bricks to. I had never seen 
Trailor up to this time, but I had a good description 
and photograph of him in my photograph gallery. 
I went up town one morning and dropped into a 
saloon across the street from the Kirkwood Hotel, 
known as the Crystal Palace. There were three men 
drinking wine at the other end of the bar. I took 
a drink and two out of the three were Des Moines 
men who I knew quite well, and they were both 
grafters, and I said, “Who is your friend." And he 
answered that is Mr. Taylor of Taylor Bros. Whis¬ 
key. I then said, “Can’t you introduce me to your 
friend?" And he said, “Yes," and he took me down 
and introduced me to him and said he was Mr. Tay¬ 
lor of New York. I immediately recognized him 
from the description and photograph I had of him 
down at the gallery. I said, “Well, there isn’t very 



138 


My Twenty-three Years' 


much difference between your assumed name and 
your real name." I said, "I recognized you im¬ 
mediately from the photograph I had as being ‘Old 
Bill’ Trailor, the Gold Brick man." "Well," he 
said, "I guess you have me so I had just as well 
admit it." I said, "What is your business here, Mr. 
Trailor, and how long do you expect to remain in 
the city?" He said, "Only a day or two, as I have 
to meet a friend of mine in Davenport, Iowa, and 
I have run short of money and have written him to 
send me some money immediately. I expect an an¬ 
swer tomorrow." He asked me to have a drink with 
him, which I did. He then said, "Chief, I owe a 
three days’ hotel bill at the Savery, and I want to 
go to Davenport tomorrow, and I’ve got enough 
money with me to take me to Davenport and won’t 
you go with me to the hotel and explain matters 
to them?" I told him that I would, so I went over 
to the hotel and saw the landlord and told how this 
man was fixed and that I believed that he would 
send the money as soon as he got to Davenport, and 
to show him that I believed he would, I told him 
that I would stand good for the bill in case he did 
not pay it. They agreed to let him go, and so a 
fe wdays after that a friend of mine came through 
Davenport and met Trailor and told him that he 
was going to Milwaukee the next morning. So this 



Experience as a Detective 


139 


friend came on to Des Moines that night, and told 
me of meeting Trailor in Davenport the next morn¬ 
ing, and I knew immediately that he intended to 
beat me if he could. I went down to the telegraph 
office and wired Chief Jensen of Milwaukee as fol¬ 
lows: Arrest Bill Trailor on charge of jumping 

hotel bill at Des Moines. Left Davenport this morn¬ 
ing. Hold him and wire me. The next morning 
I got a telegram from Chief Jensen saying that he 
had Trailor under arrest and asking for further in¬ 
structions. I went up and consulted the hotel and 
they said they did not care t ogo to the expense of 
bringing him back, so I wired Jensen again to put a 
charge of vagrancy against him and have the court 
give him thirty days in the workhouse. Which they 
did. Trailor afterward met a friend of mine at 
Chicago and was telling him how I got back at him, 
and he said, ‘Til bet I'll never try to hand Chief 
McNutt another package as long as I live. Further¬ 
more, I will keep away from Des Moines.” And 
that was the last I ever heard of “Old Bill’ Trailor 
the Gold Brick man. 



140 


My Twenty-three Years' 


CHAPTER XVI 

We will now take up the case of the State of Iowa 
against Barnie Hammil, George Weams and Johnnie 
Krout for the murder of Conductor Redpath of the 
Great Western R. R., who was well known at Kansas 
City and all points along the Great Western road. 
It seems as though Redpath had started to take his 
train out, bound for Kansas City. He liked on W. 
Third Street, near Crocker. He went down to Third 
Ctreet on the east side of the street, and just before 
he came to the Garfield school house there was a very 
large elm tree which shaded the sidewalk and as he 
got up to the tree, two fellows stepped out and or 
dered him to hold up his hands. He refused and put 
up a fight. John Hammil shot him under the chin 
which came out the back of his head. It killed him 
instantly. I was over at my mother’s home with 
my wife, and the horse and buggy. And as usual I 
always stopped at the station before going home, to 
see if there was anything special to look after. As I 
pulled up in front of the station the wagon man, 
William Skinner, came out of the door, and saw me 
and said, “Chief, Conductor Redpath has just been 
murdered around on Third Street by the Garfield 
school house.’’ I told my wife to go on home with 



Experience as a Detective 


141 


Skinner, and he can bring the buggy back here in 
case I need it, which she did. I then took hold of 
the case myself, and I found out that a friend of 
mine by the name of Clark and his best girl were 
coming down on the opposite side of the street when 
Hammil shot Rcdpath. They gave us a very good 
description of the two fellows, but as these fellows 
had never been enaged in this kind of work before it 
was pretty hard for us to figure out who they were. 
It went on for about forty hours after the murder 
had been committed, before we got any lead on the 
case at all. I was going down the street when I 
met a barber who was a friend of mine, and he said, 
"Mac, how are you coming out on the Redpath mur¬ 
der case?" I said, "Why, Billy, to tell the truth we 
haven't even got a start on it at the present time, but 
we are very anxious to get some kind of a lead, and 
we are willing to investigate anything that there is 
any chance for us to get some kind of a lead." So 
he said, "Well, Mac, I don’t know whether there 
is anything to this or not, but it might be well for 
you to investigate." I said, "Let her go and I know 
who you are referring to and I will take it up and 
see what there is to it." So he said there was a 
young fellow boarding over at the same boarding 
house where he was at, and the night of the murder 
he came home quite late and seemed to be very much 



142 


My Twenty-three Years' 


put out over something. He had talked some with 
the landlady and she had not told him very much 
of what Krout had told her. He thought if I would 
go over and interview the old lady I could get some 
very valuable information. So I went over and told 
her who I was and had quite a chat with her, and 
I asked her if she ever drank any beer, and she said 
she did sometimes. So I says, “will you drink a 
bottle with me if I go down and get it?" She said 
she would. I immediately went down to obtain six 
bottles of beer. I went back up to the house and 
I think we had drank about four bottles when she 
began to get quite talkative, and I then asked her 
how Johnnie had acted that night when he came 
home and she told me, and seemed willing to give 
me all the information that she could, and finally 
said to me, “Chief, I believe if you will go get 
Johnnie and give him a good talking to you will get 
some information that will be very valuable to you." 
Well, I started out and finally located Johnnie over 
on the west side of the river, at a livery stable on 
West Locust Street, between Third and Fourth St. 
I went up to hi mand said, “Johnnie, consider your¬ 
self under arrest and come and go with me." 
“Why," he said, “what have I done that you should 
arrest me, and on what charge?" I said, “Never 
mind, Johnnie, we will talk that over when we get 



Experience as a Detective 


143 


to the station." We went down to the station, and 
I took him up to my room and gave him what we 
call the third degree for about two hours, and I at 
last broke him down. He admitted of being with 
the fellows that had committed the crime, but that 
he had not any other part in it. He said that himself, 
Barnie Hammil and George Wearns had got together 
on the east side of the river and had started over to 
White Chapel, a part of the city where all the sport¬ 
ing houses were located at that time. He said they 
walked down West Third Street until they came to 
the White Chapel then went one block west to 
Fourth Street, then north on Fourth Ctdeet to Cen¬ 
ter Street. They then went east to Third Street and 
there Johnnie said his courage failed him as they saw 
Conductor Redpath coming down the street, and 
Hammil said, "There comes our man now." Ham- 
mil and Weams crossed the street and went south 
until they cam eto this big tree. They stepped be¬ 
hind the tree so that Redpath could not see them, 
and they both grabbed their guns, and jumped out 
and covered him. Redpath was a very game fellow, 
and instead of putting up his hands as he should 
have done after seeing they had the drop on him, he 
started to put up a fight. As he did that Hammil 
shot, the ball hitting him under the chin and coming 
out through the back of his head. They then went 




144 


My Twenty-three Years' 


through Redpath’s pockets and took what money he 
had and ran down the street. Krout was so scared 
that he did not know what to do. He said he went 
down to the livery stable and stayed there until about 
eleven o’clock. And then went over to his board¬ 
ing house. But he said he felt blue and probably 
showed it over at the boarding house and that is 
probably why I got the tip that he was connected 
with the murder. “Well, Johnnie, it don’t matter 
where I got the information. If you can show me 
that you did not have anything to do with killing 
Redpath, I will give you a chance to turn state's evi¬ 
dence and get out of this scrape. Otherwise I shall 
have to hold you for murder in the first degree. I 
asked him if he would make a statement in writing 
or let me make it in writing and swear to it in the 
presence of witnesses. He said he would, and I im¬ 
mediately drew up the statement, and let hi mread it 
over, and he said, “Yes, these are the facts, I will 
sign it,” which he did, and I had it witnessed. I 
then asked him where he thought I could locate the 
other two. And he said, “Really, Mac, I don't know, 
but I do know they are with some grading gang cut 
in the northwest part of town. I knew Mike King, 
the contractor, who by the way, used to be an aider- 
man in Des Moines, had a contract out in the north¬ 
west part of town, but I did not know just where. 



Experience as a Detective 


145 


I immediately went up to his house and asked his 
wife where they were working and she said they 
were out on 20th and Washington. Well, I went 
over to the station and got my horse and buggy and 
took one of my men, Detective James Bane, in the 
buggy with me, and we proceeded to go out to 20th 
and Washington. As we pulled up where they were 
unloading the wagons, Hammil came up with a load 
on his wagon, and commenced dumping, I went over 
and said, “Hello, Barney, how long have you been 
out here?” “Oh,” he said, “a fe wweeks, I have 
been here since they started.” “Barney,” I said, 
“somebody has filed information against you down 
at the office, and I have a warrant here for your 
arrest. I dont think there is anything to it, but at 
the same time you will have to go down before the 
court and answer to this charge. He said, “Must I 
go now, or can I go home and change my clothes?” 
“You cannot go home and change your clothes.” So 
I made him get in the buggy and I called Bane off 
to one side and said, “Now you stay here and if 
Weams comes up you grab him and hold him until 
I get back. I will be right back as soon as I get this 
one in jail.” So I proceeded to drive to the station 
with one hand, and the other hand I held my gun 
thinking this fellow might get next to what was 
going on, and might put up a fight rather than to 




146 


My Twenty-three Years* 


be taken. Well I landed him all right, and went 
right back to get Bane and to see if we could not find 
Weams, and I had not been there but a very few 
minutes until I saw Weams driving down toward 
the dump, and I immediately told Bane to get out 
of sight, that if Weams saw us he was liable to make 
a run on us. And sure enough he saw us, and at 
the time he saw us he was right on top of a big fill 
they had just made, and he jumped out of the wagon 
and throwed the lines and started and ran down the 
embankment. I told Bane to take care of the horse 
and I would follow him wherever he went until I 
got him. This fill that they had made in the road 
was right across a part of Four-Mile Creek which 
ran west of Des Moines out toward Adel, Iowa, 
which was twenty-five miles away. Weams lived at 
Adel with his father and mother. I got up through 
the timber as far as Valley Junction which was six 
miles where the Rock Island shops were located. I 
went to a telephone in Eddy Adams saloon and called 
up the Sheriff of Dallas county who was a particu¬ 
lar friend of mine and told him I had a warrant of 
arrest for George Weams on a charge of murder in 
the first degree. I told him I thought from the 
way he was going when I last saw him he would 
probably reach Adel about 2:15, so it turned out 
I had only missed my guess fifteen minutes for the 



Experience as a Detective 


147 


Sheriff’s two deputies went right down to the house 
and waited until he came. They arrested him and 
took him over to the jail and the Sheriff wired me 
that he had him and would bring him down him¬ 
self that evening, and would get to the police station 
about ten o’clock. Well, he came down, and as it 
happened Cora and Betsy Smith were in the jail at 
the time for killing Mike Smith who was Betsy’s 
husband and Cora's father. We had fourteen parties 
in the jail at that time on the charge of murder 
and the railroad men were so worked up that they 
gathered a mob of probably four or five thousand 
people and demanded the prisoners from the city 
jail, and we told them we had slipped the prisoners 
away and had taken them to F. Madison for safe 
keeping, and somebody hollered, “Boys, I believe 
they have them in the county jail." So the mob 
started for the county jail. In the meantime we 
had transferred part of our city department to the 
county jail and I got all our men we had at the sta¬ 
tion together and started them up the alley to beat 
the crowd to the jail, with instructions to report to 
the sheriff and give him all the assistance they could 
in keeping the crowd out. I then sent my four as¬ 
sistants out among the crowd with instructions to 
tell them that we had already taken the prisoners 
to Ft. Madison in an automobile and that they were 



148 


My Twenty-three Years' 


nearly there by this time. In the meantime we had 
placed the five parties we had arrested for the murd¬ 
ers of Smith and Redpath in the strong cell, known 
as the St. Louis cell. We had about twenty police¬ 
men, eight deputy sheriffs, and five detectives inside 
the courthouse on guard. But the crowd finally 
believed the men I had sent among them and dis¬ 
persed. In the meantime the Sheriff from Adel 
had left his prisoner with his deputies up on the 
street knowing that nobody would recognize him 
until the crowd had left. We then took Weams to 
the county jail, and locked him up with the rest, 
only in separate cells. The next morning I sent 
tow of my men up and got Weams and brought him 
down to my office and proceeded to obtain a con¬ 
fession from him, the same as I had Johnnie Krout. 
Using Krout’s confession to show him that we had 
him stuck anyway. Weams then admitted that 
what Krout had said in his confession was true, and 
I indorsed the confession and had Weams sign it. 
I then sent Weams back to the county jail and 
brought Hammil down and worked on him about 
three hours but he stood pat, denied the whole 
thing, and we could not do anything with him. So 
I then proceeded to go home and get some rest as I 
had been on the case for fifty-six hours and had not 
had my clothes off or a wink of sleep, and was 



Experience as a Detective 


149 


completely tired out. We tried Weams and Hammil 
for murder in the first degree, and with Kruot’s 
testimony, we convicted them of murder in the first 
degree, and the court sentenced them to be hung. 
The next meeting of the legislature, the Governor 
commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Hammil 
went crazy in the Ft. Madison penitentiary and was 
transferred to the Insane Department at Animosa. 
He died there. After serving seventeen yars, Weams 
finally, with the help of his father, who was an 
old soldier, and had a great many personal friends 
at Adel and Des Moines, prevailed on the committee 
of pardons to parole Weams on good behavior. In 
the meantime, they had been before the legislature 
four different times, trying t ohave the two of them 
paroled, and each time I had gone before the com¬ 
mittee and prevailed on them not to parole them, 
as I thought a crime of that character that they should 
serve their life sentence. In the meantime the widow 
Redpath had married the second time, and they had 
prevailed on her to sign a letter asking the Governor 
to parole them. I then gave it up myself, because 
I thought if she was foolish enough to sign a letter 
of that kind under the circumstances I would have 
nothing more to do with the case, which I did not. 



150 


My Twenty-three Years' 


CHAPTER XVII 

I will now give you a little history of the fam¬ 
ous Prince gang, who were well known all over 
the United States as being one of the best gangs of 
safe blowers in the country. My first acquaintance 
with Charlie Prince, better known as Chuck Prince 
among the gang, was made in Des Moines. His 
wife introduced me in my office. She was the daugh¬ 
ter of John McChristian. McChristian used to be 
in the hardware business on E. 5 th St. in Des Moines. 
My wife used to go to school with her, and she told 
me that Nellie was always getting into trouble, and 
stealing something. Her father and mother were as 
nice an old couple as you would want to know, 
honest and respected by all who knew them. Nellie’s 
father died and left her about $75,000 worth of 
property. Nellie went to Chicago and got in with 
the worst gang of pickpockets and shoplifters there 
were in Chicago. Bob Roberts, better known as 
the “Gorilla” was at the head of this gang, and was 
about as smart a crook as they make them. He 
married Nellie and she became the Queen of the 
gang and when one of them got into trouble or 
in jail, Nell was the one who got them out. She 
and the “Gorilla” separated, and she married Charlie 



Experience as a Detective 


151 


Prince, and they came to Des Moines to live in one 
of her houses, and she brought Charlie up to my 
office and introduced him to me and said, “We are 
going to live in one of our houses, but we will never 
do any crooked work while we live here." And if 
they could help it they would not allow anyone 
else to do any. So I said, “Alright, Prince, as long 
as you behave yourself here, you are welcome to 
stay but the first bad break you make here it will 
be good-bye Prince and wife.” Nellie was as good 
a shoplifter as there was in the country. She and 
Dora Donnigan and a woman they called May us¬ 
ually worked together. You bet they made a good 
trio. Their work was mostly sealskins and furs 
and they sure worked those department stores to a 
finish. Nellie told me that in one day they had 
gotten four sealskins from them, and a lot of other 
stuff besides. They used to go from one to the 
other of the big stores, and if any of them was 
caught the others would help to get them out. And 
once in awhile they would make a tour of other cities 
and send the goods back to Chicago to sell. I re¬ 
member one time just before Christmas I was stand¬ 
ing in front of Harris-Emery Co. store looking for 
thieves when in came Bob Roberts and he looked 
at me and came up and shook hands. He said, “What 
are you doing in here, Mac?” I said, “Protecting 



152 


My Twenty-three Years' 


this store, who have you got with you?” He said, 
“Nellie, Dora, and May.” “Is there any chance 
to work a little here?” I said, “No.” He said, 
“There is a piece of money in it for you if you will 
let us go.” I said, “Nothing doing.” Then he 
said, “How about Younger Bros.?” And I said, 
“Nothing doing anywhere in the city, so take your 
gang and get out of the city and don’t come back 
here any more or with the intention of working any 
more while I am Chief, for the next time I will sure 
arrest you.” I saw Prince a day or two after that 
and I said, “Charlie, why don't you settle down, 
or go into some business, you have money enough 
now to go into business and you have been pretty 
lucky and you had better quit now?” And he said, 
“I am going to quit after this trip.” And I said, 
“Let the trip go and quit now.” He said, “I must 
go this time.” So he and Tom Good and Charlie 
Denny and Kid McMillan went together on the trip. 
It seems that Prince had an old sweetheart that was 
running a sporting house there and the boys all 
stopped off to have a good time and they went to 
her house and in the meantime the bell boy who was 
at the hotel where they were stopping happened 
to kick his foot against their grip and heard the tools 
rattle and went down and told the clerk and the 
clerk called in the police, and they opened the grip 



Experience as a Detective 


153 


and found they belonged to a gang of safe blowers. 
They opened them and examined them and found 
they contained a complete outfit for a gang of safe 
blowers. They took possession of them and took 
them to headquarters and in the meantime the Chief 
of Police whose name was Ahern called a half dozen 
of his men into the hotel and told the mto stay 
around in the lobby and watch for the gang. 

Tom Good was the first to get back uptown, and 
as he stepped off the car, he noticed that someone 
was watching him and he thought he would stall 
a little and see what the fellow was up to. So he 
stepped over in front of the window of one of the 
stores and looked in and at the same time watching 
the fellow and in the meantime made up his mind 
to take a street car and ride out to the park 'and 
ditch this fellow before he started to the hotel. But 
the fellow would not ditch and he rode up to street 
the hotel was on and got off the car and walked 
to the sidewalk and this fellow who was following 
him was the Chief of Detectives of Quincy, Ill. Good 
stepped onto the sidewalk and over to the store 
window and as he turned around the Chief of De¬ 
tectives shot and killed him right on the sidewalk. 
The police took his body to the morgue and went 
back to the hotel to lay for the rest of the gang. 
Kid McMillan was the next one to come up and he 



154 


My Twenty-three Years' 


came in the hotel lobby and recognized five or six 
of the officers and started to go up the steps from 
the lobby. One of the police officers hollered for 
him to halt, he then started to run up the stairs and 
as he got on the first platform of the stairway the 
officer shot and hit him in the knee, but he was 
game and kept going. He ran on up to the fourth 
story and there they surrounded him and took him 
down and locked him up. They then went back 
to the hotel to wait for Prince. As he went in the 
hotel, and got in the lobby he saw about a dozen 
officers there, went into the bar and took a drink. 
He then turned and started for the back door on the 
run. When he seen the two officers there he turned 
and intended to make a run for it through the 
crowd and get out of the front door, but as he turned 
Chief Ahern pulled the trigger on him, and they 
had to take him to the morgue. About one year 
after that I was oven Canton, Ohio, settling an es¬ 
tate of my wife’s when who should I see coming 
down the street but Kid McMillan. He came up and 
shook hands and said, “What are you doing here, 
Mac?" I told him I was settling an estate of my 
wife’s and I said, “Where have you been since I last 
saw you kid?” He said, “I have been in stir over in 
Iowa for breaking in a postoffice.” And I said, 
“How did you get out of the Quincy scrape?” He 



Experience as a Detective 


155 


said, "Some of my friends got me paroled and I went 
right back in southern Iowa doing a postoffice job 
and the night watch caught me and I was given five 
years and then my friends got me paroled again.” 
“Kid,” I said, “How was it about that case in 
Quincy?” And he told me the same story that I 
have told you. He was looking very thin as though 
he had been sick and he said he had been in the hos¬ 
pital for several months and came very near croak¬ 
ing. So he ordered another drink and he drank 
it and said that he would be back in Des Moines in 
a few weeks. Prince was brought back to Des Moines 
and buried there. The last I heard of Charlie Denny, 
the officers had caught him in some more work and 
he was doing a ten year stretch. Another one of the 
gang, old Tom Monahan, was also doing a term 
in the same prison with Denny. Then Big A1 Riv¬ 
ers, another one of the gang went back to St. Paul 
his home town, and got a job at the Ryan hotel as 
house detective. Nellie Prince went back to Chicago 
and ran a rooming house there for awhile and then 
married another crook by the name of Tom Robin¬ 
son, who was one of the worst crooks in the coun¬ 
try and wasn’t particular what kind of work he 
did, whether it was stealing diamonds, picking pock¬ 
ets, or anything else that came his way. Tom was 



156 


My Twenty-three Years' 


caught somewhere in Wisconsin and was given ten 
years. 

The next will be a few remarks about Jimmy 
Bryan, one of the best pickpockets in the country. 
He always makes his headquarters in Chicago and 
takes his gang and goes all over the country. Jimmy 
used to make the state fair at Des Moines with his 
gang and we soon got next to them and arrested 
them three years in succession before they had a 
chance to do any work. They would go from Min¬ 
neapolis to the state fair there. I don’t know whether 
they were ever picked up at Minneapolis state fair or 
not but I knew Jim pretty well, and when I was 
with the Wallace circus I went up town with my 
partner one morning and we went into a saloon to 
get a drink and here was about thirty or forty men 
all laughing and talking and having a big time and 
as soon as we got in and saw who they were, we 
both throwed up our hands and began laughing and 
among the gang was Jimmy Bryan. The whole 
bunch were thieves and grafters and they had just 
left the carnival a few miles from the town they 
were showing. I have forgotten the name of the 
town, but my partner stepped up and bought drink 
for the whole crowd. We then corralled the whole 
bunch in the back end of the saloon and I said to 
them, “Now boys, we are not going to interfere 



Experience as a Detective 


157 


with your business only in this way, we don't allow 
any grafters or burglars or pickpockets to follow this 
show, I have kept the show clean since I joined it. 
No wyou know the Wallace show has always been 
friendly to you boyc and we are yet so we want you 
to lay off today from the graft and let us get out 
of here with a clean record. I want you to all come 
down and see the show this afternoon and come in 
a bunch and I will see that you have a good time 
and we’ll have a little refreshments out at the 
grounds for you." So about one thirty o'clock 
down came the whole bunch. I took them all in the 
little joint we had behind the side show and gave 
them all a drink, then took them in and gave them 
all reserved seats and told them I would see them 
after the show was out. When the big show was 
out I went back and took them all to the concert 
and when the concert was out, Ithen took them back 
to the commissary department and bought them an¬ 
other drink and they all went back uptown and 
took trains in different directions for different shows 
they intended to follow. We never had a kick of 
any kind that day, noe even for a pocketbook. It 
goes to show you that a good thief's word is as good 
as a bond for they had all promised me that morn¬ 
ing that nothing would come off that day and they 
kept their word. 




158 


My Twenty-three Years' 


CHAPTER XVIII 

The next case will be the state of Iowa against 
Fred Hull, wanted for embezzlement. I finally lo¬ 
cated him at Mannestee, Michigan. I got my re¬ 
quisition papers at Des Moines and went to Lansing, 
Michigan, the capitol and got my requisition signed 
by the governor and then started for a littel town 
way up in the woods of Michigan. I left Lansing in 
the morning about nine o’clock and this little town 
proved to be a switch station up in the woods with¬ 
out any depot, and when I arrived there about noon 
the thermometer showed 105 in the shade and it was 
so sultry in the timber that one could hardly breathe, 
and no place to get a drink of water. I finally met 
a man up there and made inquiries about Fred and 
he said he knew him and he had gone Honw to Man¬ 
nestee on the lake front the day before. Then I had 
to wait until about four o’clock to get a train to 
Mannestee. I arrived there about five o’clock hungry 
as a bear and dry as a fish. I went into a saloon and 
got a big mug of beer and a few sandwiches and 
then started out to look for my prisoner. I found 
him, arrested him on my warrant and left that eve¬ 
ning on the boat that crossed over to Milwaukee. 
I handcuffed the prisoner to me and after we got on 



Experience as a Detective 


159 


the lake we caught a nice cool lake breeze and I don’t 
know when I have ever enjoyed a night’s sleep better 
than that, for the reason that I had been out in the 
hot sun and in that timber where I could not get 
a breath of air all day and was nearly all in when 
I got down to Mannestee. I took the train at Mil¬ 
waukee, and came down to Chicago and then took 
the Northwestern train for Des Moines. We tried 
Fred and convicted him and he was given thre years 
in the penitentiary at Ft. Madison. 

I will now tell you a little experience I had in 
looking up a witness in the Smith murder case in 
Des Moines. Charley Smith who was a chum of 
Betsey Smith’s and sister of Cora Smith, knew more 
about the murder of his father, Mike Smith, than 
any of them, and we wanted to use hi mas a witness 
against Cora and Betsey. I heard he was in Chicago 
laying around one of the hop joints there, so I went 
to Chicago and tried to locate him. I had one the 
Chicago boys with me. I think it was Bert Cowdry. 
We started to take in the hop joints an dthe most 
of them were located in the basements of different 
business houses, and down on Clark street we went 
into one and Cowdry introduced me to the pro¬ 
prietor and told him we were looking for a party 
as a witness on a murder case. So we went in and 



160 


My Twenty-three Years' 


commenced to search the place and we found in one 
room as handsome and well built woman as I most 
ever saw. Bert introduced me to her and we sat 
and talked awhile and she ordered some beer for us, 
and Bert left me there to talk with her while he went 
through the rest of the rooms. She told me she was 
the wife of the manager of one of the big depart¬ 
ment stores. She had been out one night taking in 
the slums with some friends and they had got her 
to smoke a pipe of dope. She had got the appetite 
for it and could not get away from it. I then asked 
her if her husband knew if she was up against the 
dope and she said he di dnot. So she said that I 
looked pretty good to her and tried to make a date 
for me to meet her that night. But I told her that 
I was there after a witness in a murder case and this 
was Monday and I had to b eback in Des Moines 
by Wednesday and that I had no time to go out 
and have a good time. And I found out that a 
great many of the society women in Chicago were 
doing the same thing that she was, starting out 
slumming and then ending up in the hop joints. 



Experience as a Detective 


161 


CHAPTER XIX 

I will now tell you a little of the history of old 
Tom Dennison of Omaha who ran a big gambling 
house there and also a big saloon and who all the 
thieves in Omaha were paying a rake-off to for pro¬ 
tection. Tom stood in with the thieves and the 
police, and when one of the thieves would be caught 
and brought into court. Tom was always the man 
who got them out, and who also bought all the 
goods the thieves stole, and principally diamonds 
and jewelry. As Tom stood in with an old Jew 
that ran the biggest pawnshop in Omaha he would 
buy all the jewelry and diamonds at almost nothing 
and then sell them to the Jew at a good profit. Tom 
had stood in with the police department of Omaha 
for a great many years and had run his gambling 
house and saloon. The saloon was known as the 
Budweiser and the gambling house was known as 
the Diamond, one of the biggest gambling houses 
in the country. I remember one time, when the 
Prince gang went into Omaha and robbed a big fur 
store, the party's name I have now forgotten, but 
they took all the furs such as sealskin coats, seal¬ 
skin muffs and all the best furs that they had in the 
store. They had shipped them to Des Moines but 



162 


My Twenty-three Years' 


before the Omaha officers got next to who had 
done the work they had reshipped them to either 
Chicago or St. Louis. I had met some of Prince's 
St. Louis gang that ran a hotel there and have al¬ 
ways thought that the goods were shipped to Prince's 
friends in St. Louis and that they sold them out in 
St. Louis. Anywoy they had in the meantime ar¬ 
rested Prince and Chas. Denny and Tom Monahan 
and charged them with robbing the store, but they 
could not locate the goods and did not have enough 
evidence without having the goods and therefore had 
to turn the mloose for lack of evidence. Whether 
Dennison had anything to do with that case or not 
I have never found out, but always thought he had. 
Prince admitted to me afterwards that he and his 
gang did get the goods. 



Experience as a Detective 


163 


CHAPTER XX 

The next will be the case of the state of Iowa 
against Bob O’Callagan for burglary. O’Callagan 
was the son of James O’Callagan of whom I have 
told my readers in one of the previous articvles to 
this, whose father ran the booze joint at 606 W. 
Walnut street that had the well where they dumped 
the booze in when the officers would show up. Bob 
was a pretty . 

Ex-Mayor Barton, do you remember the farm that 
I bought from your friend the dentist in the Hipper 
Bldg, and how for several months you put off sign¬ 
ing that bill? Do you know how much you beat 
me out of by not signing them and then you talk 
o fbeing a man of honor. Bartin, I think you are 
a rotten politician and I don’t think you are on the 
square a little bit and as far as Miller was concerned 
he was as rotten as they make them and was a side 
partner of that boot-legging Sheriff Charles Sev- 
ernde who stood in with all the boot-leggeing drug 
stores in the city and was taking bribes from all of 
them and Mr. Severude probably remembers the 
little set to we had in the sheriff’s office in the pres¬ 
ence of the county attorney and Superintendent Mil- 




164 


My Twenty-three Years' 


ler of the Safety Department when I told you where 
you got off at and what I would do to you if those 
places were not closed at once. You probably re¬ 
member of going to the East Side and notifying all 
the boot-legging drug stores that was paying you 
graft money and at the same time Mr. Miller you 
went to all the gamblers and notified them to close 
until you could get me quieted down and that you 
could open up again and you know that I went be¬ 
fore the Grand Jury and reported the names and lo¬ 
cations of about 50 joints that were running at that 
time and you could look out the window of the 
sheriff's office and throw a stone and hit a gambling 
house that there had been $10,000.00 in one night 
that change hands. Now, gentlemen, it was your 
duty as head of Public Safety and Sheriff to stop 
them if you were not taking graft money. Why 
did you let them run? There was Harry Fraze and 
John Ba rrackman and Harry Fraze’s sister that I 
am told beat the city of $175,000.00 and still you 
make a great blow that because of your not having 
enough policemen to patrol the city. If you had 
200 more it would make no difference only make 
more expense for the city. Now I can prove every 
assertion I have made and you know I can and hav¬ 
ing such officers as that, it is no wonder the people 
think Des Moines on these statements alone convict 



Experience as a Detective 


165 


Miller and Barton of knowing nothing about police 
work and I will explain why a policeman in uni¬ 
form is no good capturing crooks and for this reason 
a crook can see a uniform a block or two away and 
always disappears before the cop sees him. I would 
not give six good experienced detectives for all the 
rest of the force. That is nothing disparaging to the 
policeman for sometimes luck comes their way and 
they pick up a crook or two but generally they are 
more to look at and the good effect it has on the 
general effect it has on the general public for keep¬ 
ing down crime is wonderful. The police and de¬ 
tective departments must work together to make a 
good department and must let the police know they 
are there for that purpose. One is as important as 
the other in keeping the city clean. 

But you must all work for the one point, that is 
the city's good and the city’s interest. You can't 
scare a crook by letting him see a main in uniform. 
You must push your detectives out. Let them lo¬ 
cate the crook dens. They should know where ev¬ 
ery crook is and his different lines of work so that 
when a job comes off you can line your detectives 
up, report to them the kind of work, the location and 
description if any, and all the little points that would 
probably help. Then the question is, do you or 
any of you know anyone who does this line of work 



166 


My Twenty-three Years' 


and if so, do you know where he stops and whether 
he is in town or not? Give us all any information 
you may know that will help us to discover who 
committeed this crime. Your man in uniform is 
more to look at. Mr. Barton and Mr. Miller if 
you had any brains and were next to your business 
you could very easy see that but you both always 
have alibis. Mr. Barton, John McVicar is the only 
real Mayor we have had for years and he always 
had the city clean, and why? 




Experience as a Detective 


167 


(Newspaper Extract) 

FORMER LOCAL CHIEF OF DETECTIVES 
WILL TELL GRAND JURY ABOUT IT. 

George McNutt, former chief of detectives, today 
will go before the Grand Jury to expose the alleged 
immoral conditions of Des Moines, he announced to 
a Tribune reporter last night. 

“Marshall Miller in an interview suggested that I 
go before the Grand Jury and tell what I know. 
That was a bluff. L/ am going tomorrow,” McNutt 
said last night. 

Stating that there was more crime in Des Moines 
now than there ever was before, McNutt said that 
conditions had come to such a point where it was 
necessary for the citizens to act for themselves. 

“The police are in with these crooks. They re¬ 
fuse to aid Des Moines. It is only after a crime 
that they start to act. Then they act for a short 



168 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


time and quit until they are forced to act again,” 
McNutt said. 

1 offered to clean up the city and Miller ridi¬ 
culed my proposition. I am going to show the 
people of Des Moines I know what I am talking 
about. 

The streets are infested with street walkers, boot¬ 
leggers, gamblers, and crooked taxicab drivers. They 
roam the streets at will and are not bothered by the 
police. It is a known fact that the city is ‘open.* 
It is more so now than it ever was in the history of 
the city.” 



Experience as a Detective 


169 


(Newspaper Extract) 

CITY NEEDS MORE POLICE SAYS McNUTT. 
DECLARES FORCE INADEQUATE TO PRO¬ 
TECT RESIDENCES. 

In commenting on the offer of George McNutt, 
former chief of detectives, to clean Des Moines of 
vice. Mayor H. H. Barton yesterday said anyone 
might make the same offer and actually succeed, given 
the requisite funds and police personnel. 

“We need at least 35 more policemen," se stated. 
“Des Moines actually has no larger force than 25 
years ago when there was no traffic problem. Be¬ 
sides, there are now three shifts, instead of two as 
formerly. With the heavy drain on police person¬ 
nel because of the necessity of maintaining a traf¬ 
fic squad, it is not possible adequately to protect the 
residence districts.'" 

Cops' Beats Too Large 

This statement was in view of the fact that there 
is no policeman on duty east of 16th st. in East 




170 


My Twenty-three Years’ 


Des Moines, either by day or night; that one officer 
protects South Des Moines at night and none in 
daytime; one is on duty at night in University Place, 
but none during the day, and one in the Highland 
Park district at night, but none in the daytime. 

The policeman who patrols East Des Moines has 
the entire district from East Fifth St. to East Ninth 
and Hull Sts. Because of the physical impossibility 
of walking the entire “beat”, he is forced to hit 
only the high spots, stopping at all business cen¬ 
ters, and covering the remainder of the district on 
the street car. 


Patrolman Never Seen. 

He takes the East Sixth and Ninth Street car to 
the end of the line, stopping at all centers and try¬ 
ing the doors of business houses. He has not the 
time to waste on homes. Then he turns by way of 
the 1st St. car, doing likewise. 



Experience as a Detective 


171 


(Newspaper Extract) 


VICE CHARGE IS TAKEN TO GRAND JURY. 


County Attorney Rippey had a conference with Mc¬ 
Nutt this afternoon and arranged for McNutt’s 
appearance before the grand jury. Rippey 
said he had intended to subpoena 
McNutt as a witness. 


“I will go before the Polk countygrand jury to¬ 
day and tell them what I kno wabout vice and crime 
which have been prevalent in Des Moines for the 
past eight months,” said George McNutt, former 
chief of detectives. 

In the Capital yesterday, ex-chief McNutt of¬ 
fered to post a forfeit of $1,000 if he couldn’t clean 
up Des Moines in six weeks. He called upon the 
city to post a similar amount. 

All he asked was to be clothed with police pow- 





172 


My Twenty-three Years' 


ers and receive the salary of the chief of police while 
engaged in the cleaning up process. 

When The Capital put the proposition up to 
Councilman Miller, the latter replied: ‘'Let McNutt 
go before the grand jury with h isevidence if he 
knows so much.” 

So McNutt says he will follow that course. 

“Des Moines is open.’ The streets are overflow¬ 
ing with bootleggers, gamblers, street walkers and 
men of suspicious character,” McNutt says. “They 
stand in with the police.” 

‘It’s all bunk,” said Marshall Miller today. “Mc¬ 
Nutt is too old to do anything like that, even if he 
knew anything about vice in the city.” Chief Don- 
oghue made no comment on McNutt’s offer. 

According to Arthur D. Freyer, secretary to the 
mayor, there have been periods of more than thirty 
days when this patrolman has not been seen at all in 
his neighborhood. This, he stated, was because it was 
physically impossible for the man to protect the 



Experience as a Detective 


173 


business interests and residences over the entire dis¬ 
trict. 

Altogether, including patrolmen and detectives, 
chiefs and assistant chiefs of departments, there are 
120 men on the force. So urgent, is the need of 
more policemen, Freyer said, that the traffic squad 
of the afternoon shift is called in after eight hours 
of duty; roll call is held, and they are sent out again 
to catch violators of the dimmer law and other auto¬ 
mobile regulations. 



174 


My Twenty-three Years' 


McNUTT FAILS TO APPEAR. 

McNutt was to have appeared before the grand 
jury here yesterday to tell what he knows about the 
vice conditions here. The proceedings of this jury are 
held secret until indictments are returned. 

“It is easy enough to criticise/' Mayor Barton 
said, ‘and constructive criticism is one of the ways 
to better conditions. But a better way would be 
the addition of of a great many more patrolmen. 
The outlying districts mus go practically unproteetd. 
Most of the recent robberies and holdups have been 
along the roads leading out of Des Moines. 



















































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